There was no listing in Seattle’s essential alt. culture weekly newspaper The Stranger for the gig scheduled at The Boathouse on February 19, 1995, no fliers being handed out outside the venue on Mercer Street, no mention at all of the show on any of the college radio shows dedicated to promoting left of the dial outsider art in the Emerald City. It was almost as if the four-piece band who’d booked the show didn’t want anyone to know about it. Which wasn’t too far from the truth.
“There was a lot of interest right off the bat,” their frontman told Rolling Stone 20 years on. “and that scared us because we hadn’t done anything yet.”
Except, of course, all four musicians had done things before, and that was precisely why they were deliberately choosing to manage expectations for their first public appearance. The rhythm section – bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith – had spent the previous three years playing together in local alt. rockers Sunny Day Real Estate, Seattle’s best-known post-hardcore band, signed to the city’s Sub Pop label. Guitarist Pat Smear was an American hardcore legend, a founding member of nihilistic Los Angeles punks Germs, and most recently, Nirvana’s touring guitarist, until Kurt Cobain’s April 1994 death by suicide brought that new opportunity to a definitive end.
The ‘face’ of the band might never have fronted a group before, but it was always going to be his presence that would ensure that the band would be under the spotlight from day one, as he was only too aware.
“I was always going to be “that guy from Kurt Cobain’s band” and I knew that,” he admitted.
‘That guy from Kurt Cobain’s band’ was Nirvana drummer turned Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.
In the weeks and months after Cobain’s death, Grohl, by his own admission, was “about as confused as I’ve ever been”, and utterly unsure as to his future plans. But between October 17 and 23, 1994, at Robert Lang Studios not far from his Seattle home, Grohl committed 15 songs to tape, playing every note himself, except for some guitar on X-Static contributed by The Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli. Within two months, word had leaked that Grohl had a new project, but at that point, he didn’t yet have a band. As Foo Fighters were assembled, for their own reasons, each man was looking to start a fresh chapter.
“We wanted to do something new and we wanted to feel new again,” Grohl told Rolling Stone in 2015. “So, the loft party seemed like the perfect place to start.”
Cheered on by supportive friends and family members, Foo Fighters’ first gig was never really going to be as “terrifying” as Grohl had feared. But it’s easy to understand why the band’s leader elected to wait until everyone in attendance was “wicked fucking drunk” before they debuted a set of songs that almost no-one had ever heard.
“I remember it being such a huge relief that we just made it to the end,” Grohl reflected 20 years on, “and then it was maybe a month later that I heard the recording of it – and I was fucking mortified.
“I thought we sounded great and I heard the recording like, Ohhh . . . that’s the Foo Fighters? We’ve got to practice.”
Twenty years on, Grohl had hoped to release a cassette of the show for Record Store Day. The only problem being that no-one seems to know if one exists, its semi-mythical status making it “some Raiders of the Lost Ark shit” as he told Rolling Stone. Don’t hold your breath.
(LouderSound)
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