It’s difficult to avoid thinking of Foo Fighters as an excessively ambitious side project of Dave Grohl. There’s no denying that Foo Fighters is Grohl’s band. Everything that goes on one of their records has to go through him first, despite his claims to have a band mentality whenever he takes the mic. Long before the band was even an idea, Grohl had a solo career despite the extreme attention to detail.
But Dave Grohl never liked the idea of being a frontman with a bunch of hired guns when he was assembling his first punk rock bands. He always believed that the goal of rock and roll was to have fun. In early jam sessions, he formed bands like Mission Impossible and Freak Baby by inviting friends to play music.
Dave Grohl seized the chance to try out for the hardcore band Scream. While still in his teens, Grohl began touring and established himself as a mainstay on the hardcore circuit. Eventually, Buzz Osbourne of Melvins noticed him and gave his name to a new band that was in need of a drummer.
Grohl’s drum fills, when combined with Kurt Cobain’s melodies, made Nirvana into a machine. This made the album Nevermind one of the greatest hits ever. Grohl even acknowledged that he had no plans to introduce his solo songs to the band. Despite the fact that he had been writing them in between Nirvana sessions.
Grohl believed that none of his songs could match Cobain’s inventive approach to melody. “Our songwriter was pretty kickass,” Grohl remarked in an interview with Lars Ulrich. That’s the only joke, really, about drummers. Before being fired, what is the last thing a drummer says? Hello everyone, this is my song that I think we should play.
Though he didn’t have a band to put together, Grohl was busy perfecting his songwriter’s craft in between Nirvana recording sessions. Grohl chose to release the album under a different name, using the pen name “LATE!”. The record, titled Pocketwatch, was released without waiting to separate it from Nirvana.
This was a small peek into Grohl’s musical mind, even though Nirvana was still touring the festival circuit. In his solo debut, Grohl reimagines songs, later Foo Fighters classics, deviating from the sounds of his main group. One example is “Friend of a Friend” from In Your Honour.
Grohl’s evolving output impressed Cobain, leading to the drummer singing one of his songs for the B-side to “Heart Shaped Box”. It would eventually become the song “Marigold”. The three band members were supposed to work together on the ensuing Nirvana projects. But, after Kurt Cobain passed away in 1994, Grohl started Foo Fighters out of a desire to make music for fun in a studio across the street from his home.
While capturing Foo Fighters’ post-Nirvana trajectory, Pocketwatch never aimed to be the album of lost classics. While learning his craft as a songwriter throughout the album, Grohl is aware that with a little more refinement, he could reach new heights.
