Foo Fighters is celebrating the 30th anniversary of their eponymous debut album.
Videos by American Songwriter
In a letter posted to the band’s website, frontman Dave Grohl reflected on the group and paid tribute to its late drummer, Taylor Hawkins.
Grohl’s letter began by recalling Thanksgiving 1994, the meal where he first met “young, spry Nate Mendel.”
Grohl found the bassist to be “as equally grateful for music as I had been my entire life,” so soon the men teamed up to form Foo Fighters with guitarist Pat Smear and drummer William Goldsmith.
While Grohl noted that the band “began almost as an excuse” to take a “detour from maturity,” it soon became “a new beginning.”
The band didn’t stay in its first form forever. Eventually guitarist Chris Shiflett, keyboardist Rami Jaffee, and “incomparable” drummer Hawkins joined the group.
“What was once an ‘excuse’ to exist had now became a ‘reason.’ And with each year, each tour, each album, the roots grew deeper, the tree taller,” Grohl wrote. “… Once our roots took hold, we realized that there was no turning back. Foo Fighters was now a ‘life’ thing. Forever.”
“Though we didn’t always agree on a destination, we always felt that we’d get to where we needed to be as long as we went together. With each other, for each other,” he added. “… This band is certainly bound together, held tightly so as not to fall apart, no matter the decade. Still a work in progress, assembly still required, but constant progress is part of what makes us all who we are as people. I am proud that we are still growing, our roots now too deep to pull.”
Dave Grohl Remembers Late Foo Fighters Drummer Taylor Hawkins
In addition to their success, Foo Fighters experienced some “moments of devastating heartbreak,” most notably Hawkins’ 2022 death in Colombia while on tour with the group.
“And… Taylor,” Grohl continued his letter. “Your name is spoken every day, sometimes with tears, sometimes with a smile, but you are still in everything we do, everywhere we go, forever.”
“The enormity of your beautiful soul is only rivaled by the infinite longing we feel in your absence,” he continued. “We all miss you beyond words. Foo Fighters will forever include Taylor Hawkins in every note that we play, until we do finally reach our destination.”
Grohl ended his letter with a callback to the start of it, referencing that Thanksgiving meal where he and Mendel met 30 years ago.
“I now realize that there was no way to predict what was to become of our lives that night,” Grohl wrote. “And just as I was that stormy Thanksgiving evening in 1994, I am still grateful for life, love, music, and the mystery of where this path may lead us next.”
After signing the letter, Grohl included the lyrics to a new song, “Today’s Song,” which the band put out in honor of their anniversary.
Photo by Richard Dobson/Newspix/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.