“I had no idea how good of a guitar player he was when we started recording. Most of the guitar on the records is him”: Foo Fighters super-producer Nick Raskulinecz on the most surprising thing about Dave Grohl's guitar playing

Frontman Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters performs at the Intersect music festival at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on December 7, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Before Nick Raskulinecz became the go-to producer and engineer for bands like Rush, Alice in Chains, Ghost, Deftones, Evanescence, Halestorm, and Mastodon, it was an encounter with Dave Grohl that opened up the opportunity for him to produce the Foo Fighters' 2002 album, One by One – followed by 2005’s hugely successful In Your Honor – which subsequently led to work with a huge roster of A-list bands.

“I had recorded the Foo Fighters at Sound City [Studios, the LA studio which has seen the likes of The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Fleetwood Mac, and Bob Dylan record there],” he tells Rick Beato. “I was an assistant on a session they had done. I was an assistant a couple of times because Dave really loved Sound City, because he recorded there with Nirvana.