{"id":358105,"date":"2026-03-25T23:25:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/358105\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T23:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:25:12","slug":"this-was-something-we-needed-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/358105\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThis was something we needed to do…\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO, on sale Tuesday March 17, and available to order HERE<\/a> \u2013 Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters have discussed the making of the band\u2019s forthcoming new album,\u00a0Your Favorite Toy, and\u00a0opened up\u00a0about the impact of the tragic death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022.<\/p>\n

In his first\u00a0major\u00a0interview since Hawkins\u2019 passing, Grohl reveals how he started work on the music that would provide the album\u2019s foundations as a means of therapy during the turbulent years that followed.<\/p>\n

Each day, he would go into his home studio \u2013 often in the middle of the night \u2013 and start \u201crecording these instrumentals, ranging from something you could hear on [Led Zeppelin<\/a>\u2019s]\u00a0Presence<\/a>\u00a0to [1982\u2019s seminal punk tape] the Bad Brains\u2019\u00a0ROIR\u00a0cassette. It was all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no plan to make an album,\u201d Grohl tells MOJO\u2019s David Fricke. However, he reports that after a year of writing and listening back to the \u201c40 or 50 instrumentals\u201d he had amassed, he found one stretch of eight recordings that were \u201cpunchy, fast, energetic\u201d which felt like the seeds of a new Foos\u2019 album. \u201cI said, \u2018That\u2019s what we need…\u2019\u201d recalls Grohl.<\/p>\n

Out on April 24,\u00a0Your Favorite Toy\u00a0is Foo Fighters\u2019 first album with new drummer Ilan Rubin, who replaced Josh Freese, Hawkins\u2019 initial replacement, in 2025. Largely recorded in a matter of weeks in the small studio above Grohl\u2019s garage, the band report that two key guiding lights during the album\u2019s sessions were the punk and hardcore groups they\u2019d loved as teenagers, and the stripped-down techniques of\u00a0In Utero<\/a>\u00a0producer Steve Albini<\/a>, who died in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the design going in,\u201d says bassist Nate Mendel. \u201cDave referencing the hardcore records from the \u201980s that we grew up with \u2013 blown out, loose and rough.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did it so\u00a0bam bam bam,\u201d adds guitarist Pat Smear. \u201cI would say we did it punk-rock style but that\u2019s everyone rushing and playing all together. This was like, \u2018Somebody needs to come from 10 to one.\u2019 \u2018Pat, we need you for four songs.\u2019 OK, got that. It was still\u00a0bam bam bam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been about the challenge,\u201d says Grohl. \u201cWe\u2019ve been that band willing to try something we don\u2019t know we can do whether it\u2019s\u00a0Sonic Highways<\/a>\u00a0[the 2014 album recorded in different, legendary American studios], working in a basement [where Grohl, Mendel and Hawkins made 1999\u2019s\u00a0There\u2019s Nothing Left To Lose<\/a>] or doing it upstairs in my house.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not taking in lying down: Foo Fighters in the studio (from left) Ilan Rubin, Pat Smear, Chris Shiflett, Rami Jaffee, Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel. \u00a9Piper Ferguson<\/p>\n

A challenge of a far graver kind came with 2023\u2019s\u00a0But Here We Are<\/a>, made\u00a0directly\u00a0in the aftermath of both Hawkins\u2019 passing and the death of Grohl\u2019s mother, Virginia, only five months later, on which a still shellshocked Grohl played drums.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had this idea,\u201d he recalls of\u00a0But Here We Are. \u201cWe were going to record live, the five of us, and we would play the drum tracks from speakers in the room. We\u2019d hit the chord and play along to these drums. But there was no one there. There was just this void, and we were desperately trying to fill it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawkins\u2019 death, aged just 50, on the night the band were due to headline the Est\u00e9reo Picnic festival in Bogot\u00e1, Colombia, on March 25, 2022, is a tragedy that still haunts Grohl and his bandmates.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Blood brothers: Taylor Hawkins and Dave Grohl in 2011. \u00a9Lester Cohen\/WireImage<\/p>\n

\u201cLosing Taylor was never meant to be,\u201d Grohl tells Fricke, the first time he has publicly discussed his bandmate\u2019s passing at length in an interview. \u201cThat threw our world upside down and made me question everything about life, that it was so unfair. I still have a hard time making sense of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The parallels between the loss of Hawkins \u2013 whose relationship with Grohl, Smear likens to that of Mick Jagger<\/a> and Keith Richards<\/a> \u2013 and the early days of Foo Fighters following the death of Nirvana<\/a> frontman Kurt Cobain<\/a> in 1994 is something the members of the band were acutely aware of.<\/p>\n

Grohl recounts that the \u201cheartbreaking experience\u201d of Cobain\u2019s death had driven him to record Foo Fighters\u2019 1995 debut album, then take it on the road with Smear, Mendel and original drummer William Goldsmith. When Hawkins, who replaced Goldsmith in 1997, died 30 years later, he and the rest of the band \u201crealized this was something we needed to do. Because it had saved us once before…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, I was running on fumes and unleaded gas. Now I\u2019m just burning fucking diesel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our world-exclusive interview with the Foo Fighters in full. Plus! Get your hands on bespoke compilation CD of tracks hand-picked by Dave Grohl and Nate Mendel, only available when you purchase a copy of the new MOJO. More info and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE<\/a>!<\/p>\n

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