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EOnline.comUNPLUGGED: The Foo Fighters set to launch their first acoustic tour in May playing material from their 2005 release In Your Honor.

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FOO FIGHTERS SEEK NEW TALENT FOR GRAMMYS

 

The FOO FIGHTERS are searching for an undiscovered musician to join them on stage at the 2008 Grammy Awards. The rockers have launched the My Grammy Moment contest to find a string, woodwind or brass player ahead of next month's (Feb08) ceremony. Entrants must submit a 60-second video of them playing the band's recent single The Pretender by midnight on 20 January (08). A panel of judges will then select 45 finalists who will go on to face a public vote to decide who will join the group for their orchestral performance at the event on 10 February (08). The Pretender is nominated for Best Song at this year's awards, while the band is also tipped to receive the accolade for Best Rock Album for last year's (07) Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace. Justin Timberlake was the first artist to be featured in the My Grammy Moment competition last year (07), when he invited singer Robyn Troup to join him onstage.

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Foo Fighters dig deeper with 'Echoes'

AP

 

 

LOS ANGELES - Even though she's a good few years away from taking stubby pencil to paper herself, Dave Grohl's baby daughter Violet gets full credit for influencing her daddy's writing style.

 

For the Foo Fighters' founder and frontman, the 2006 birth of his first child added a personal, often confessional tone to his lyrics.

 

"Having a child made me feel like a superman in a way because I had to be," says Grohl, who turns 39 this month. "Just as I can't be afraid to ride the Spiderman roller coaster at Magic Mountain when it's time, I can't be scared of writing things that I really feel. There are a lot of things that I kept myself from saying over the years."

 

Indeed, the Foo Fighters' current album, "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace," includes some of Grohl's most revealing, introspective lyrics such as on "Stranger Things Have Happened," an intimate look at marriage.

 

It's clear both fans and critics are responding to "Echoes." The album has sold more than 530,000 copies in the U.S. since its September release and received five Grammy nominations including a coveted album of the year nod. The first single, "The Pretender," took up residence atop Billboard's Modern Rock chart, spending a record 17 weeks at No. 1. The group will play the song at the 50th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 10.

 

"Echoes" is the group's sixth studio album, and is the follow-up to 2006's live acoustic CD "Skin and Bones." As drummer Taylor Hawkins explains, the album "covers everything we've ever done in a weird way, sometimes in one song." The tunes on "Echoes" range from the hard rock of "The Pretender" to the pop sheen of the second single "Long Road to Ruin."

 

However, the CD also takes the band in new musical directions, in addition to the added lyrical depth. Grohl's wife gave him a piano for his birthday a few years ago, which spurred him to write the mid-tempo, Beatles-esque "Statues." He also takes on bluegrass-tinged country with "The Beaconsfield Miners."

 

Grohl, the Foos' primary songwriter, wrote the song as a tribute to two trapped miners in Australia who requested Foo Fighters' music delivered to them on an iPod. It wasn't until that incident that he realized the impact the Foos' music could have.

 

"For years, I've had people come up to me and say, 'That album helped me through a really difficult time' or say 'This song was the first dance at our wedding,' but something like the Beaconsfield incident, that was so much heavier. It was about survival," he says.

 

It's an idea he still has difficulty getting used to.

 

"The music that changed my life was made by people that I consider heroes," he says. "So it's hard for me to think the same of myself because that would be a little weird, wouldn't it?"

 

"Echoes" was recorded with Gil Norton, the producer of 1997's "The Colour and the Shape." The Brit is best known for his work with the Pixies, Throwing Muses, Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World.

 

Norton says Grohl was looking to continue the acoustic direction the band had ventured into in recent years.

 

"One of the things Dave really wanted to do was to combine the acoustic album that he'd done coming off the acoustic tour — the bigger band, string players — and build things from acoustic songs into rock songs. That's the sort of dynamic he wanted," he says.

 

But Hawkins admits that he worried whether Norton could bring the right dynamic to the Foos, which also includes guitarist Chris Shiflett and bassist Nate Mendel.

 

"The first record he did with the band, the drummer quit," Hawkins says, referring to William Goldsmith. "I heard he was a complete work horse and a tyrant and nothing's good enough (but) he was a hard-working guy and he did work us hard."

 

Norton wasn't the only hard-worker — he calls Grohl "possibly the hardest-working man in rock. I swear to God, he never stops. He is so driven."

 

Grohl doesn't deny he's a grateful workaholic: "I'm a high school drop-out; I was working odd jobs in a furniture warehouse and (stuff) like that. To be lucky enough to have the greatest job in the world, why wouldn't you want to do it every day?"

 

And now, as the band prepares to hit the road Jan. 16 for a nationwide tour, Grohl is ready to be on stage, a sensation he compares to being "a ringleader of this circus." Still, he says he has tempered his work habits since Violet entered the picture.

 

""I used to be able to say there's nothing I'd rather do than (play), but finally there's something I'd rather be doing," he says.

 

Grohl set a two-week limit on time away from his family. After being separated for 14 days, "I said I can't take any more than that. That's too much; so it's just a whole new way of life for me."

 

The same goes for Hawkins, who has a new baby boy. "You just make concessions," he says of balancing career and home life. "But let's face it, we're all so blessed in the position we're in, getting to make music every day and paid way too much for what we do, but there's little prices to pay."

 

Grohl has developed a reputation as the most genial of rockers, and after enough drama as Nirvana's drummer to last a life time, he prides himself on being Mr. Dependable.

 

"Our band is seen as one of those bands that you know is going to show up and do the gig and I don't have a problem with that, I swear to God. I can understand the allure of the (screwed)-up, unpredictable nightmare musician, but it's a lot easier to go make a record and play gigs and, you know, be a dude."

 

And to continue to play with his band mates in what once seemed to be a finite future.

 

"I never imagined the Foo Fighters lasting more than a few albums and now I can't imagine it ending," Grohl says. "I really always thought there was going to be this clear line that the band would end and I would start doing all the things that I wanted to do, like have children or stay at home and be a father, but I'm starting to realize that they can co-exist."

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Foo Fighters: “We’re Already Working on Songs”

 

 

Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel says the band is already crafting new music despite just releasing Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace in September 2007. “We’re already working on songs. Got a handful of ‘em already that we’re working on at soundcheck, which has never really happened, so we’re getting a headstart,” Mendel tells the Rock Radio. “The band’s in a good place. Everyone’s really excited about it, excited about making music, so we’re already getting going.” With the band on tour through the end of the year promoting Echoes, which won the Grammy for Best Rock Album earlier this month, the Foos’ next album likely won’t be out until mid-2009.

Rolling Stone

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Foo Fighter Taylor Hawkins Expecting Baby No. 2

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

It's a rock band baby boom!

 

Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and his wife, Alison, are expecting their second child, he tells PEOPLE.

 

"I have one on the way!" Hawkins, 36, said last weekend at Clive Davis and the Recording Academy's Pre-Grammy Gala in Beverly Hills, while pointing to his wife's growing belly.

 

The baby will join the couple's 18-month-old son, Oliver Shane.

 

Hawkins's band mate, Dave Grohl, is also becoming a father for a second time. The Foo Fighters frontman, 40, whose daughter, Violet Maye, turns 3 in April, announced in October that he and wife Jordyn Blum are also expecting their second child.

 

"Backstage banter is not what it used to be," Hawkins tells PEOPLE. "[Now] it's like, 'What school is your kid going to?!' It's great.'"

 

Source: People

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Grohl Unhappy About Greatest Hits Album

 

FOO FIGHTERS rocker DAVE GROHL is unhappy with the band's new Greatest Hits album, insisting they should have waited until they were ready to retire to release it.

 

Grohl insists he and his bandmates had no say over the compilation, which was released earlier this week (ends06Nov09), and he would have turned down the venture had it not been written into their record contract.

 

He tells the BBC, "It still seems premature because we're still a functioning, active band. Those things can look like an obituary. We were asked to do this a long time ago. We wrote it into a deal a long time ago - that's how it works.

"They started asking about four years ago, and we said, 'Don't we need some hits?'"

 

The former Nirvana star even insists the new album is missing some of his favourite Foo Fighters songs, describing it as a "beginner's guide" to to he band.

 

Grohl adds, "I think there are better songs than some of those."

 

Source contactmusic

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Grohl: 'I knew Cobain would die young'

 

 

Dave Grohl always knew his Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain would die young, so he prepared himself for his pal's early death.

 

Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home in 1994, aged 27, and his passing was officially ruled a suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

 

Grohl tells BBC Radio 1, "There are some people that you meet in life that you just know that they are not going to live to be a hundred years old. In some ways, you kind of prepare yourself emotionally for that to be a reality."

 

The Foo Fighters frontman insists the tragedy had a positive impact on his own life, because he learned never to take anything for granted.

 

He adds, "Usually it takes something like that for people to appreciate life as a gift and you have to take advantage of the time that you have. Sometimes you just can't save someone from themselves."

 

 

 

source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate...7#ixzz0WZtx2kH0

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Dad Rocker Dave Grohl

 

Dave Grohl says fatherhood has changed the way he makes music.

 

The Foo Fighters frontman - who has two daughters, Violet, three, and nine-month-old Harper, with wife Jordyn - admits the songs he writes are a lot more emotional because he has a different outlook on life.

 

He said: "It's changed everything that I do. When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting."

 

The 41-year-old rocker also refuses to tour for long periods of time because he hates being away form his family.

 

He explained to Time magazine: "I used to tour nine months out of the year. Now I don't like being away from my kids for more than 12 days."

 

Although he loves being a dad, Dave has previously admitted Violet's birth had been the "scariest" moment of his life.

 

He said: "I went to the birth. I knew the science. I could've f***ing delivered the baby myself at that point. I'd desensitised myself by watching those stupid TV shows with the graphic birth.

 

"But I was nervous. It was a sketchy birth because her cord was around her neck and there were a couple of times when her heartbeat dropped. That's the most frightened I've ever been in my life."

 

Source femalefirst

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I remember him being asked that question when I think they were on VH1s Storytellers or something like that. They played this one song "Wheels" that I somehow never heard before and can't find anybody know what album its on or where I could find it?

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They played this one song "Wheels" that I somehow never heard before and can't find anybody know what album its on or where I could find it?

"Wheels" is only available on their "Greatest Hits" album.

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Foo Fighters Back To Work

 

The Foo Fighters have started writing songs for their next album.

 

The band's frontman Dave Grohl said he's already started work on the follow up to 2007s 'Echoes, Silence Patience and Grace' and the band will return to the studio to record at the end of summer.

 

He said: "Foo Fighters have just started writing and we're going to start recording in September so life is full of music."

 

The new record from the group - which also includes guitarist Chris Shiflett, bassist Nate Mendel and drummer Taylor Hawkins - will be their seventh studio album.

 

Meanwhile, Dave has been busy other projects - as he is drummer with supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, alongside Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Josh Homme and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

 

The group recently released their eponymous debut album and are said to be working on a second album which they also hope to release before the end of the year.

 

Dave has also recently been involved with Taylor's side project band, Coattail Riders, who are set to release their second album 'Red Light Fever' in April.

 

 

Source contactmusic

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