Foo Fighters (album) - Recording

Recording

"The first Foo Fighters record was not meant to be an album, it was an experiment and for fun. I was just fucking around. Some of the lyrics weren't even real words."

Grohl and Jones produced the record across a period of one week in October 1994, with Grohl recording all vocal, guitar, bass and drum tracks himself. Both would arrive in the morning at Robert Lang Studios, start production by noon and do four songs a day. According to Grohl, during the recording process he would run from room to room, "still sweating and shaking from playing drums and pick up the guitar and put down a track, do the bass, maybe another guitar part, have a sip of coffee and then go in and do the next song". The only performance by an outsider was a guitar part on "X-Static" provided by Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs, who was watching Grohl record the songs. Grohl eventually asked him if he wanted to play and handed him a guitar. Each song took about 45 minutes to be completed, and the compositions were recorded in the same order that became the album's track listing. The only song that required two run-throughs before completion was "I'll Stick Around". Grohl was insecure about his singing, and added effects to his voice in "Floaty", and tried to enhance the performance through double track – "You know how people double their vocals to make them stronger? That album the vocals are quadrupled."

In an attempt to keep his anonymity, Grohl planned to release the songs under the name Foo Fighters. It would be a very low-key release, with only 100 LP records being pressed after the sessions were finished. Grohl also went to a cassette duplication lab in Seattle and created 100 cassette copies of the session and started handing them to friends for feedback and "I'd give tapes to everybody. Kids would come up to me and say Nirvana was my favourite band and I'd say well here, have this". Eddie Vedder premiered two songs from the recording on January 8, 1995 during his Self-Pollution radio broadcast. The recordings quickly circulated amongst the music industry, which in turn created record label interest. A deal was eventually signed to Capitol Records, as president Gary Gersh was a personal friend of Grohl ever since he worked on Nirvana's label Geffen Records.

The mixing sessions of the album began in Robert Lang Studios (which were used on the 100 tapes Grohl gave away) but eventually those mixes were discarded and the sessions moved to Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock's "The Shop" studio in Arcata, California. Mixes were done on a 32 channel API DeMedio console, custom built by Frank DeMedio in 1972 for Wally Heider Recording's 'Studio 4'. A Stephen's 24 track 2" tape machine was used for playback. Processors used in the mixes included an Eventide Omnipressor compressor for vocals and guitar solos, an Alan Smart stereo compressor for "squashing" the drums and mixing them back in as well as being used over the entire mix. Other processors included UREI 1176 and LA3A compressors as well as an Echoplex for delays and a "crappy digital reverb". Mixes were "nothing that crazy" Rob described, adding that he "mixed Big Me in 20 minutes".

During the sessions, Grohl was invited by Tom Petty to perform with The Heartbreakers on Saturday Night Live one month later. The performance was followed by an invitation to be a full-time member of the Heartbreakers, but once Petty heard about the Foo Fighters, he instead encouraged Grohl to move on with this solo project. Grohl soon recruited a full band, which included bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith of the recently disbanded Sunny Day Real Estate, as well as Nirvana touring guitarist, and former Germs member, Pat Smear.