Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Remember when Dave Grohl was just a really good drummer? I know, it’s hard. You got to go back 30 years, if you were even born then. Since making his inauspicious debut behind the trap kit with forgotten Washington D.C. hardcore band Mission Impossible in 1986, Grohl played on perhaps the most important album of the 1990s, sold a scadillion records as frontman for his band Foo Fighters, directed a documentary about famed recording studio Sound City, created an eight-part mini series called Sonic Highways about the recording of the Foo’s eighth album and the history of American regional music scenes, started a side-band with one of the dudes from Led Zeppelin, and been the musical representative of real rock n’ roll whenever the music industry deems to pay it notice. You can’t blame people for being sick of the guy, I mean, besides the thousands of people selling out Foo Fighters shows each night on their current headlining tour.
The 2011 documentary Foo Fighters: Back and Forth was the first time we got to hear Grohl talk about himself at length. Released to coincide with the band’s seventh album, Wasting Light, and now available for streaming on Netflix, it traces the history of the band from its inception up to the album’s creation. It also points to Grohl’s modus operandi of the past decade; to keep things interesting for himself and his band by turning each new release into an event, augmented by a documentary, or a documentary TV series, or a special concert tour, or some other shenanigans to make it more than your humdrum routine of write, record, tour, year off, write, record, tour, year off, ad infinitum.
Much as he did with Sound City and Sonic Highways, Grohl ties his musical beginnings to his worship of various musical heroes. The opening montage features music from his favorite artists, from Queen to Motörhead to Hüsker Dü, along with home movies of the Foo Fighters as kids. Grohl then reveals his biggest childhood fantasy was to fill-in on drums for his favorite band at a show, which is pretty funny considering he’s basically made a career out of this. After cutting his teeth on the D.C. punk scene, Grohl stepped into the drum chair for rising Seattle grunge band Nirvana, their third drummer overall. Making music with the band, Grohl says, was “simple and pure and real.”
From the jump, Grohl’s effusive East Coast ambition stood in contrast to his lead singer’s retiring melancholia. While Nirvana’s breakthrough album Nevermind brought fame and fortune, it was anathema for Cobain, whose self-worth was tied to his punk credibility. Pat Smear, guitarist for L.A. punk legends The Germs, was brought in towards the end to flesh out the live sound and lighten to the mood, but Cobain’s drug problems got the best of him. The singer took his own life on April 5, 1994, after which Grohl said he was “numb” and Smear “quit the music business.”
To shake his malaise, Grohl booked a week of studio time in late ’94 and recorded a bunch of songs he had written, playing all the instruments himself. This recording session would become the Foo Fighters’ debut album, released the following summer. Grohl had a record and a band name but he didn’t have a band. Fortuitously, seminal Seattle emo rockers Sunny Day Real Estate were breaking up at the time, and Grohl recruited bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith into his new band, bringing along Smear on second guitar for good measure.
While Foo Fighters are not a solo project but a band, they are without a doubt Dave Grohl’s band. Finding the balance between group endeavor and their bandleader’s artistic vision has not always been easy, and Back And Forth doesn’t shy away from discussing the hiccups along the way. Most notably, Goldsmith quit after Grohl re-recorded his drum takes during the grueling recording sessions for the band’s second album The Colour and the Shape. Grohl cops to the “unfair” expectations he had, but he’s unapologetic about wanting the songs to live up to his formidable drumming standards. Likewise, second guitarist Franz Stahl, who replaced a road weary Smear and had played with Grohl in hardcore legends Scream, was unceremoniously fired over the phone when his playing didn’t jibe with the rest of the band.
Unfortunately, by the time all the membership ups and downs are ironed out with the addition of drummer Taylor Hawkins and guitarist Chris Shiflett, Foo Fighters: Back And Forth settles into a rather mundane laundry list-like recounting of each album’s creation and the band’s achievements. They record as a trio, then Taylor ODs, then they almost break up, then they don’t, they record an album twice, then they record a double album, then Smear comes back, which is weird, but then it’s cool, then they play Wembley Stadium, which is treated as a high point in the band’s existence.
The film concludes with the recording of Wasting Light in Grohl’s garage in Encino, which feels more like an EPK than part of a narrative film. In between sessions, the band cavorts in the pool with their kids, which is apt considering the Foo Fighters have become the preeminent Gen X Dad Rock band, telling youngsters about the importance of Minor Threat or interviewing Obama about his iTunes playlist. Grohl ends the film on a cliché, saying, “I feel bad about the bad things, I feel good about the good things, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Watching Foo Fighters: Back And Forth six years on, it feels like a dry run for Dave Grohl’s subsequent forays into merging music with movie making. And while it’s a adequate chronicle of the band up until that point —Hell, it even won a Grammy for Best Long Form Music Video— it lacks the multi-layered narratives of Sound City and Sonic Highways, which made those endeavors more interesting than your average band doc. Tellingly, unlike those later pieces, Back And Forth wasn’t directed by Grohl, but by Academy Award winner James Moll. As Dave Grohl knows, sometimes if you want something done right, you just have to do it yourself.
Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter: @BHSmithNYC.
