Foo Fighters: Rockumentary
Posted on Wednesday April 6, 2011, 16:17 by Eve Barlow in Empire States
Eardrums… ready! Headphones… ready! Three. Two. One…
It’s Foo time again. No, no, we don’t mean Fu (you’ll have to wait a little longer for Kung Fu Panda 2: The Sezchuan Strikes Back). We mean Foos. Insane, punishing drums from Taylor Hawkins, shredded multi-layered mother-fudging rock guitars courtesy of Chris Shiflett, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear and lots of raaaargh, *!@$*&!ing and growling by the Viking Golden God of ROCK: Sir Dave Grrowwwlllllllll (actually, plain 'Dave Grohl' is probably best). The fighters of Foo are back! With an album! Yeah! Woo! Uuhsome!
Before you ask, “Has Jack Black hacked into Empire to avenge the poor review of Gulliver’s Travels?” fear not. Empire still doesn’t report on bands or music or albums or musical bands releasing albums, unless said bands and their music albums are about / in / for films. The exception to the exceptions, of course, is when the band are the Foo Fighters, the album is the forthcoming Wasting Light and that release is accompanied by a feature-length documentary about this whole Foo Fighting thing. So it's within our remit because the documentary is going to get shown on massive, loud, massive cinema screens with loud noises that ROCK… Bring that shit on!
Along with BBC Radio 2’s Jo Whiley (first DJ to play Dave Grohl’s first band Nirvana on mainstream radio), Sugababe magnet Dave Berry and The Chung (again, not a kung-fu reference but a new nickname for Alexa Chung), Empire sat down to a preview screening of the “Foos” documentary about their incredible career recently, directed by Oscar-winner James Moll. At the time we saw it, it was untitled. Sadly, while our favoured title was a toss-up between Look Who’s Talking Foo and The Adventures Of Winne The Foo, they've gone with the slightly more sensible Foo Fighters: Back & Forth.
Opening with a brief history of Nirvana and Grohl’s candid feelings about Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the film takes us through the early line-up changes of Foo Fighters, the relentless touring and recording, the druggy bits, the bromance bits and the bits that rock, right up to the present day and production of this new LP. Check out the Foos playing Wembley and crying like only men who look like Thor can cry. Check out Butch Vig (Nevermind producer) producing an album by a multi-million dollar band in a garage without a single Apple Mac, using only giant machines, reels and lots of knob thingies. Check out Dave Grohl between takes, swimming with his daughter in the pool next to the garage. Then check out Krist Novoselic (Nirvana’s bassist) slapping the bass while Dave licks porridge off his kid’s finger… in the garage. It’s like a rock’n’roll version of The Flintstones. It’s BedROCK. It’s… yabadabaRAARGH!
Yes, it’s lazy to call Dave Grohl the “nicest man in rock”, and, honestly, it's a bit hard for us because we were sort of hoping someone was going to give Empire the moniker of “nicest man in rock” one day, however unlikely that may be. But, Dave Grohl in the flesh really is the nicest man in rock. One listen to an anecdote about him taking his kid to meet The Muppets (“The Moopets”) and it'd take a harder heart than Empire's to begrudge him the title. What's more, whether or not you know or care anything about the Foos, this is a damn fine rockumentary. It's less confrontational than Some Kind Of Monster, less bittersweet than Anvil! and slightly more sensible than This Is Spinal Tap. So we suggest you check all this out when it’s released this Friday.
Please share your devil horns and comments below, but take your Kung Fu requests up elsewhere. This is for Foos Eyes Only. (In other news, Empire needs a pack of Strepsils and a Solpadine please, now. Yes!)
