Session Information
Having heard the surprise news that Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins had re-recorded much of the new album in Virginia, Nate Mendel and Chris Shiflett had the strange and unconventional task of heading into a studio alone to add their own parts. With Grohl heading away on tour with Queens Of The Stone Age his home studio was not a viable option for the duo and so they and producer Nick Raskulinecz instead headed to The Hook Studios, situated in the Woodlands Hill suburb of Los Angeles.
“It was a weird way to make a record” explained Shiflett. “We had made a version of it, but we shelved that and then came back and made another one pretty quickly. Dave was leaving the next day to go back on the road with the Queens so we sat down in the studio with Nick and listened to the demos.”
Without Grohl to oversee proceedings it was up to producer Nick to take control and instruct Shiflett and Mendel. “He’d say things like ‘I think you should play a little something in there. Play a little melody on that chorus'“ recalled Shiflett. He and Raskulinecz went through each song, listening to the guitar tracks Grohl had already recorded and deciding which parts needed further work, either doubling Dave’s parts for a bigger sound or adding some unique touches. “[Dave] just left me and Nick to record my guitars and that was that, and I didn't even know what was going to make it on to the disc or not. But a lot of it did, even though it was a weird, broken-up way of making a record. Everyone did their parts separately.”
Recording at The Hook took place towards the end of May at which point the fourth Foo Fighters album was complete for a second time. This time the band were happy enough with the results and the album was mixed and mastered, combining the work from May with ‘Tired Of You’ from the earlier sessions. The Foo Fighters troubled fourth album, ‘One By One’, was released in October 2002.
