On This Day in Rock History… The Foo Fighters Debut

It was the 4th of July, 21 years ago that Dave Grohl released the Foo […]

It was the 4th of July, 21 years ago that Dave Grohl released the Foo Fighters debut album.

Foo Fighters began as a project to help Grohl take his mind off losing his long time music friend and collaborator Kurt Cobain after Cobain’s untimely passing.

The debut featured Dave Grohl basically writing and producing the entire album by himself with a little guitar help and the assistance of a producer. He put the project together really just for fun initially and called it Foo Fighters to disguise his actual identity. Foo Fighters is a term U.S. pilots would use during the second world war to report the sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object. After the album was finished, he made up some cassette copies of the work to share with some music industry friends to get their take on the music and the reaction was positive.

Eventually there was some record people interested and Grohl would have to hire a full band if he was going to “tour” the new music. Foo Fighter’s self-titled album would go on to earn positive critical reviews and would become one of the band’s top selling albums.