Were he not already a singer, multi-instrumentalist, writer and occasional actor, Dave Grohl could earn a living making life’s lemons into lemonade. The ex-Nirvana drummer started fronting Foo Fighters in the fallout of Kurt Cobain’s death; nearly 30 years later, they’re earnestly promoting themselves as “the last great American rock band”. A similar sense of answering immeasurable grief with tireless forward motion permeates the band’s latest return to the spotlight, a live stream to unveil their next phase.
Just over a year ago, in March 2022, Taylor Hawkins, the band’s drummer of 25 years, died of a sudden cardiac arrest with drugs including opiates, antidepressants and benzodiazepines found in his body. He was 50 years old. Fans mourned a musician so skilled that he somehow made the kit his own while sharing stages with Gen X’s favourite drummer; his bandmates publicly celebrated his life by playing two stadium-sized tribute shows featuring guest appearances from everyone from Lars Ulrich to Kesha. But tonight’s live stream, titled Preparing Music for Concerts, is firmly focused on the present and future. The footage fades into view in black and white and begins with a scene of innocuous band banter: “Have you ever gotten into a fight with someone in your own band on stage?” Grohl randomly asks his four surviving cohorts. Their subsequent smiley reminiscences mark the first sign of normality in the Foos camp in more than a year.
Hawkins isn’t mentioned once over the ensuing hour, which dwells instead on the question of his replacement for their forthcoming US tour, a potentially morbid question that they answer with trademark good humour. The Foos are known for this kind of lightheartedness, found in everything from the Learn to Fly video to their Carrie-parodying Ice Bucket Challenge. Today, a cavalcade of superstar drummers bust into the band’s Studio 606, only to excuse themselves. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith? Someone’s Mercedes is blocking his car. Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee? He’s just bringing in some Chinese food. Tool’s Danny Carey? He’s only here to groom the Foos’ poodles.
The punchline is that actual fill-in Josh Freese was in the same room, perched behind an offscreen drum kit, the entire time. For anyone who’s paid attention over the past year, him landing the job isn’t a stunning revelation. The chameleonic session musician – who already has Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Springsteen, Paramore, Weezer and Guns N’ Roses on his CV – played at both Hawkins memorial concerts in 2022. Last week, he left his posts in both the Offspring and Danny Elfman’s band. The writing was on the wall, no matter how star-studded the smokescreen.
Similarly unsurprising is that Freese plays Foos songs as if Hawkins mentored him. Once the music starts, All My Life is just as volatile a post-hardcore explosion as it was on 2002’s One By One. The scrambling pace plays to Freese’s punk roots (as well as Grohl’s underrated throat-shredding howls) and he even gets a mid-song solo. By the time he has thrashed his way through Monkey Wrench, to the visible awe of his new bandmates, it’s clear the sheer extent to which this stream is all about him. He and Grohl frequently geek out on drumming between songs; the frontman also quizzes him on his punk band the Vandals and his days playing in a Disneyland covers act at 12 years old.
The other throughline of tonight’s proceedings is that the Foos are releasing a new album next week (2 June) and it can’t promote itself. The stream’s monochrome colour scheme is doubtlessly designed to tether it to But Here We Are, with its black and white cover and music videos. Both singles, classic-sounding anthem Rescued and bittersweet yet uptempo rocker Under You, are performed, the latter especially evocative in its exploration of loss: “Think I’m getting over it / But there’s no getting over it.”
They debut a new song, Nothing at All. The verses’ strummed guitar and swaggering bassline crescendo with a pop-hardcore hook. “Never mind, love and hate! / Peace of mind, it’s a bit too late!” Grohl snarls to end a lyrical breakdown of a tumultuous relationship.
Together, these three songs paint a picture of a back-to-basics rock record, eschewing the prog of 2017’s Concrete and Gold and the dance flourishes of 2021’s Medicine at Midnight. It may prove an apt soundtrack to a band clearly craving a renewed sense of normality in the aftermath of tragedy. Ultimately, what Preparing Music for Concerts deals best in is reassurance: the Foos can still play powerfully and enjoy themselves with their first new drummer since 1997, while their forthcoming output seems set to resume the band’s hard-rocking ways. Dave Grohl’s lemonade stand is still doing brisk business.
• But Here We Are is released via Roswell/RCA on 2 June
• This article was updated on 22 May 2023 to more accurately report the drugs in Hawkins’ body when he died.
