Bassist Nate Mendel discusses how life in the Foo has changed after 13 years.

2008-02-24T19:05:00.000-08:00

CHRIS RIEMENSCHNEIDER, Star Tribune

Apparently, Dave Grohl isn't the only Foo Fighter who brandishes a wry, self-deprecating sense of humor. So does bassist Nate Mendel, who called while the band was still on break following its Grammy Awards appearance two weekends ago -- one of several things he had a good chuckle over.

Mendel joined in 1995, after his previous band Sunny Day Real Estate split up and Grohl had climbed out of Nirvana's rubble with a strong batch of self-recorded tapes that become the first Foo record. Thirteen years later, the group is one of the few rock bands with punk roots performing in arenas. And it's literally bigger than ever, too, having expanded into an eight-piece touring lineup for the band's new album, "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace."

Q How did the band manage to double in size?

A It wasn't anything that was really well-thought-out or strategic. With [the 2005 double-disc] "In Your Honor," we had this idea to not only split the album up into quiet and loud sides, but to split the tour up that way, too. The acoustic tour ended up being the most fun, because it was something new. We'd been doing the same thing for 11 years. It made us feel like musicians. It gives us a little more to brag about: "Check us out, we're a rock band with a piano. We're versatile!"

When we would have like one random rock show in the middle of some of those quiet shows, we'd practice a song like "All My Life," and we were like, "God, this is easy." It got us excited about the different possibilities of the band, so we incorporated some of that into this new record.

Q Another big change is you guys are all family men now. How's that working out?

A We had a month-long tour last fall, and my family didn't come out at all. When I came home, my son didn't want anything to do with me for about a week, until he remembered who I was. So we decided if we're going out for more than two weeks, to have everyone come out, and that's been going great. Except now my son has a little trouble realizing what's home. He thinks he has an L.A. house and a New York house now instead of just hotels.

Q One of the things that struck me about your current tour is how clearly you guys have embraced being an arena-rock act and putting on an arena kind of show. Considering you all have punk roots, was that a hard transition?

A It's a new challenge. We had to. We could have kept playing in the same size venues that we were playing before, but we decided it was the natural evolution of the band. Dave writes the songs, and these are the kinds of songs he likes to write. He's not pandering to a big audience. He likes melodies and he likes songs to be direct, like pop songs. [Arenas] are where they're best suited. Dave has turned into a really good frontman. He's turned into a showman, and he enjoys it, like a new thing he learned how to do. It's fun.

Q You're the member with the longest tenure in the Foo, besides Dave. How do you look back on when you first joined the band?

A So much has happened since then. We went in pretty young and naive. I had really high hopes for the band, so I was excited to join. And it was fun right from the beginning. The second record was a huge challenge for us. I came in with Sunny Day Real Estate drummer William Goldsmith, and he left, and then Pat [guitarist Pat Smear] decided to leave, so that was all tough. We had to figure out what the band meant from that point on. We've been through a lot, had to grow. I'm really proud. We've worked hard and we've done some good work and survived.

Q You wrote the liner notes to the 10th-anniversary reissue of "The Colour and the Shape." Do you agree it's your best?

A Nobody wants to say, "That was our high-water mark" when it was 10 years ago. But I wanted to acknowledge its reputation as the band's best work. There's something that a brand-new band is going to be able to put into a record that a band that's been around a long time can't. A part of it is just raw enthusiasm, and part of it is the naivete and the lack of experience you have.

It's bound to be fresh and different in a way you can't replicate when you've been making records for 10 years or however long. That's something to learn to accept. That record could've only been made at that time. And our lives were crazy at that time. We weren't dads; we hadn't been doing the same thing; it was all really fresh. It's all intangible, but it's there on the record.

Q Pat Smear, who was with the band back then, is back on tour with you as a backup guitarist. How is it having him back?

A I love Pat. One good thing about having him back is we don't have to explain him anymore. The smartest and weirdest guy I've ever met in my life. He's a true individual. There's no one like him. And not to mention the way he plays and what he brings in. He loves it. He's such an individual on stage. No one has his schtick.

Back [when he quit], it just wasn't the right thing for him at that time. He was not ready to be focused on it. In a way, he could almost see the band turning into what it is now, playing arenas, and in a way that was something he wasn't ready to be a part of at that time.

Q Seeing Pat and Dave together again brings back memories of Nirvana, too. Is Dave's history with Nirvana still a big factor in the Foo Fighters? How often does it come up?

A It is and isn't a big thing. It still is Nirvana, a huge iconic band. But enough time has passed now where we can joke about things we couldn't joke about five years ago. Me personally, I always have kind of left it alone. There has always been so much pressure on Dave to explain his feelings about Nirvana, the last thing I wanted to do was ask him to talk about it for the thousandth time. He talks about it when he wants to.

Q After a couple of straight-ahead videos, you guys went back and made one of your goofiest of goofy videos for "Long Road to Ruin." Were things getting too serious?

A We would make fun of ourselves and say, "There's the band that used to be known for their good videos." What could we do? The content of the songs became a little more weighty and serious. You can't do a goofy video to "All My Life"; it would be ridiculous. So Taylor [Hawkins, drummer] had this idea for a while of satirizing the old '70s soaps, and it was a good match for this song. So we were like, "All right, let's put on the wigs again."

Q Were you mad about the band's surprise loss to Herbie Hancock for best album at the Grammys, sort of like when Jethro Tull or Steely Dan won?

A I thought that was cool as hell. I'm being totally honest. Kanye West and Amy Winehouse were both so favored to win. I said right beforehand, "I don't want to accidentally win this. People are gonna be pissed." And of course, Kanye was already the big non-winner that night, and he wasn't really conducting himself very well, I thought, so I was kind of happy he didn't get it.

Full Biography of Foo Fighters

2008-02-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

While he was drumming with Nirvana, Dave Grohl was recording original songs at home that never received public release. Those tapes would become the foundation of Foo Fighters, the band he formed in 1995, after the death of Kurt Cobain. Like Nirvana, Foo Fighters melded loud, heavy guitars with pretty melodies and mixed punk sensibilities with a sharp sense of pop songwriting.

Dave Grohl began playing guitar and writing songs in his early teens, as well as performing with a variety of hardcore punk bands. In the late '80s, when he was still in his teens, he joined the Washington, D.C.-area hardcore band Scream as their drummer. During the final days of Scream, Grohl began recording his own material in the basement studio of his friend Barrett Jones. Some of Grohl's songs appeared on Scream's final album, Fumble. After Scream's 1990 summer tour, Grohl joined Nirvana and moved to Seattle.

After Nirvana recorded Nevermind, Grohl went back to the D.C. area and recorded a handful of tracks that would appear on Pocketwatch, a cassette released by Simple Machines. For most of 1992 he was busy with Nirvana, but when the band stayed off of the road, he recorded solo material with Jones, who had moved to Seattle. The pair kept recording throughout early 1993, when Grohl returned to Nirvana to record In Utero. Grohl had toyed with the idea of releasing another independent cassette in the summer of 1993, but the plans never reached fruition. Following Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994, the drummer kept quiet for several months. In the fall of 1994, booking time in a professional studio, Grohl and Jones recorded the album that became Foo Fighters' debut album in a week. Boiling down his backlog of songs to about 15 tracks, Grohl played all of the instruments on the album. He made 100 copies of the tape, passing it out to friends and associates. In no time, Grohl's solo project became the object of a fierce record company bidding war.

Instead of embarking on a full-fledged solo career, Grohl decided to form a band. Through his wife he met Nate Mendel, the bassist for Sunny Day Real Estate. Shortly before the pair met, Jeremy Enigk, the leader of Sunny Day Real Estate, had converted to Christianity and quit the band, effectively ending the group's career. Not only did Mendel join Grohl's band, but so did Sunny Day's drummer, William Goldsmith; former Germs and Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear rounded out the lineup. The band, named Foo Fighters after a World War II secret force that allegedly researched UFOs, signed a contract with Capitol Records. The band's self-titled debut, consisting solely of Dave Grohl's solo recordings, was released on July 4, 1995. It was an instant success in America, as "This Is a Call" garnered heavy alternative and album rock airplay. By early 1996, the album was certified platinum in the U.S.

Throughout 1996, Foo Fighters supported the album with an extensive tour, enjoying a crossover hit with "Big Me" that spring. Late in the year, the group began recording their second album with producer Gil Norton. During the sessions, William Goldsmith left the band due to creative tensions, leaving Grohl to drum on the majority of the album. Before the record's release in the spring of 1997, Goldsmith was replaced by Taylor Hawkins, who had previously drummed with Alanis Morissette. The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters' second album and the first they recorded as a band, was issued in May of 1997. Smear left the group in the wake of the album's completion, and was replaced by guitarist Franz Stahl, whose stay proved short-lived; 1999's There Is Nothing Left to Lose was recorded as a three-piece, with ex-No Use for a Name guitarist Chris Shiflett signing on soon after. One by One, the group's most polished production, appeared in late 2002, followed by 2005's In Your Honor, which narrowly missed the top of Billboard's album chart. After releasing a live album titled Skin and Bones in 2006, the band returned to Norton's studio and started constructing a dozen fractured and eclectic rock songs to be released in 2007 under the name Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Foo Fighters on Blog

Bassist Nate Mendel discusses how life in the Foo has changed after 13 years.

Full Biography of Foo Fighters