Foo Fighters are an American rock band formed in 1994 in Seattle, Washington. The band was founded by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl as a one-man project following the dissolution of Nirvana after the suicide of Kurt Cobain. The group took its name from foo fighter, a nickname coined by Allied aircraft pilots for UFOs and other aerial phenomena. Over the course of their career, Foo Fighters have won 12 Grammy Awards, including Best Rock Album four times. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, their first year of eligibility.
Prior to the release of Foo Fighters’ 1995 debut album Foo Fighters, which featured Grohl as the only official member, Grohl recruited bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith, both formerly of Sunny Day Real Estate, as well as Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear. The band began with performances in Portland, Oregon. Goldsmith quit during the recording of their second album The Colour and the Shape (1997); most of the drum parts were re-recorded by Grohl. Smear departed soon afterward but appeared as a guest with the band frequently from 2005; he rejoined in 2010.
Smear and Goldsmith were replaced by Franz Stahl and Taylor Hawkins; Stahl was fired before the recording of the group’s third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999). The band briefly continued as a trio until Chris Shiflett joined on guitar after the completion of There Is Nothing Left to Lose. Foo Fighters released their fourth album, One by One, in 2002. It was followed with the two-disc In Your Honor (2005), which was split between acoustic songs and heavier material. Foo Fighters released their sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, in 2007.
For Foo Fighters’ seventh studio album, Wasting Light (2011), produced by Butch Vig, Smear returned as a full member. Sonic Highways (2014) was released as the soundtrack to the television miniseries directed by Grohl. Concrete and Gold (2017) was the second Foo Fighters album to reach number one in the United States and their first studio album to feature longtime session and touring keyboardist Rami Jaffee as a full member. The band’s tenth album, Medicine at Midnight (2021), was the last to feature Hawkins, who died in March 2022.
There Is Nothing Left to Lose is the third studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released on November 2, 1999, through Roswell and RCA Records. It marked the first appearance of drummer Taylor Hawkins, and is often seen as a departure from the band’s previous work, showcasing a softer, more experimental sound. Dave Grohl has stated that the album was “totally based on melody” and that it might be “[his] favorite album that [they’ve] ever done.”
There Is Nothing Left to Lose won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2001, marking the band’s first ever Grammy win. The band would go on to win the Grammy for Best Rock Album for three of their next four studio releases (One by One; Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace; and Wasting Light).
There Is Nothing Left to Lose is Foo Fighters’s first album to be entirely released and marketed by RCA Records since their departure from Capitol Records after release of The Colour and the Shape two years earlier. Their two previous studio albums, originally distributed by Capitol, were since then distributed by RCA.
Prior to recording, guitarist Franz Stahl was fired, as frontman Dave Grohl felt the guitarist had not found his place in the band. At that point, Grohl decided that the band would just be a three piece for the record, along with bassist Nate Mendel and drummer Taylor Hawkins. Having just slaved themselves in the studio making the last record The Colour and the Shape and losing two band members in the process, he decided to buy a house in Alexandria, Virginia and make the record in its basement without any record company presence during production. This was helped by the Foo Fighters’ leaving Capitol Records after president Gary Gersh left the label. Grohl named his home facility Studio 606, at first saying, “It’s just one of those numbers that’s everywhere. Like when you wake up in the middle of the night and it’s 6:06, or you see a license plate that says 606.” He later told the full story of the number’s significance in a July 20, 2020 Instagram post: spending the evening with his father in 1985, he received a particularly searing “what do you want to do with your life” lecture that defines the bittersweet moment he finally communicated to his father the depth of his commitment to becoming a professional musician, before sneaking out. “606” was his father’s apartment number.
Grohl set up the studio with the help of Adam Kasper, who eventually co-produced the album. The biggest challenge, according to Grohl, was making the record sound good without computer programs such as Pro Tools or AutoTune.[6] Dave Grohl notes that he had:
“[…] been living in Los Angeles for about a year and a half, just being a drunk, getting fucked up every night and doing horrible shit, and I’d finally gotten sick of that new car smell. So I bought this great house in Virginia and told everyone I was building a studio in the basement. It was literally a basement with sleeping bags on the walls!”[1]
In 2006, Grohl stated that: “It was all about just settling into the next phase of your life, that place where you can sit back and relax because there had been so much crazy shit in the past three years. At that point it was me, Taylor and Nate and we were best friends. It was one of the most relaxing times of my whole life. All we did was eat chili, drink beer and whiskey and record whenever we felt like it. When I listen to that record it totally brings me back to that basement. I remember how it smelled and how it was in the Spring so the windows were open and we’d do vocals until you could hear the birds through the microphone. And more than any other record I’ve ever done, that album does that to me.”
The title emerged to Grohl as he talked to a friend “about when you experience these emotions after you’ve been through a long, difficult period and you finally give into this feeling that, quite simply, there is nothing left to lose. It can seem… positive, desperate and reckless.” The frontman also said that it represented the band’s mood during production: “we just wrote off and played like all bets were off. No one was forcing us to be there, so it had to be fun—and the songs had to be the best we could possibly come up with at the time.”
After the album was ready, the band signed with RCA Records to distribute the album. For promotion, the label focused on “getting the Foo Fighters brand out there”, setting up the band’s official website, and arranging appearances on broadcast television and events such as the Gravity Games. There Is Nothing Left to Lose was released in an Enhanced CD featuring the music video for the first single, “Learn to Fly”, along with song lyrics and photographs.
While the album was recorded as a three-piece, Grohl decided that he still needed a second guitarist for the live performances. After open auditions in which 35 musicians were tested, the band hired Chris Shiflett, whom Grohl considered the best guitarist and singer who auditioned, and “he fit in with the rest of us so well”, particularly for his background in punk rock bands. In September 1999, the band performed club dates in New York and Los Angeles, to both showcase the new songs and test Shiflett’s performance with the group. The There Is Nothing Left To Lose tour started in 2000.[8] The North American leg was overlapped with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication Tour.
Early pressings of the disc included a temporary tattoo, similar to the one featured on the album cover. The album was also re-released in 2001 in Australia as a two-CD edition which offers a second VCD disc of four videos and one bonus track, “Fraternity.” (wikipedia)
Foo Fighters were the most unexpectedly mercurial band in ’90s rock, boasting a different lineup for each of their three albums. The ever-shifting membership didn’t help erase the image that the group was merely a vehicle for Dave Grohl, and made it seem like Grohl was something of a dictator, at least to some biased outside observers. That’s why their third record, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, comes as somewhat of a surprise. It is the first Foo Fighters album that sounds like the work of a unified, muscular band, and the first one that rocks really hard. A lot of credit should go to Adam Kasper, who produced the record with the band. There Is Nothing Left to Lose has a stripped-down sound and an immediate attack that makes even the poppier numbers rock hard.
The organic, natural sound is welcome, but the album also benefits from the strongest set of songs Grohl and Foo Fighters have yet written. There are the typical strong singles, but there’s no fat or filler; each track has a memorable hook or melody, and they seem all the more catchy because they’re delivered with conviction and confidence. And that’s why the album sounds like the first true band album Foo Fighters have made — the group sounds assured and confident, where they previously seemed like they had something to prove. It’s as if they know they have few peers in straight-ahead post-grunge hard rock, so they’re willing just to lie back and turn out a solid set of 11 songs. They make it sound easy and fun, and that’s what really sets them apart from their contemporaries. That and the fact that they’re getting better as they’re losing members and growing older, which is certainly a rarity in rock & roll. (by Stephen Thomas Erlewine)
Personnel:
Dave Grohl (vocals, guitars, drums, percussion, loops, mellotron on 08., talk box on 05.)
Taylor Hawkins (drums, percussion)
Nate Mendel (bass)
Tracklist:
01. Stacked Actors 4.16
02. Breakout 3.21
03. Learn To Fly 3.55
04. Gimme Stitches 3.43
05. Generator 3.47
06. Aurora 5.48
07. Live-In Skin 3.53
08. Next Year 4.35
09. Headwires 4.36
10. Ain’t It The Life 4.15
11. M.I.A. 4.04
All songs written by Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel and Taylor Hawkins.
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