Dave Grohl has unveiled his most ambitious Foo Fighters project yet, a multi-media musical road trip across the US. But he still has to cook breakfast for his kids. He talks to Chris Schulz.
Dave Grohl, one of the world's biggest rock stars, is about to launch a new album and a television show, before heading out on a world tour that could last years.
But that doesn't mean he can skip out on dad duties.
"I got the kids up and out of bed and dressed and off to school, came over here to do some interviews, then I'm going to edit another episode, then the band's going to start rehearsing, then I'm going to drink three bottles of wine and go to sleep," Grohl says from his film production office in Los Angeles.
He exhales, lets out one of those cartoon chuckles of his, and admits that he is "f***ing busy.
"That's every day, just so you know. Every f***ing day."
The reason for Grohl's exasperated expletives is that his chart-busting, award-winning, stadium-shaking rock 'n' roll machine the Foo Fighters is about to chug back into life with their eighth album, Sonic Highways.
Unlike Wasting Light's stripped-back DIY-in-a-garage approach, this one comes packaged with Grohl's most ambitious project yet: eight songs recorded in eight US cities with a roster of guest stars that reads like a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction list. It includes Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, blues star Gary Clark jnr, the Eagles' Joe Walsh and Joan Jett.
If that's not enough, Sonic Highways also comes backed by cable giant HBO, with an eight-episode TV show of the same name that starts screening here on Sunday night. It not only charts the album's creation, but, in Grohl's words, "tells the story of America's musical history".
He interviewed hundreds of musicians for the show, including Slash, Macklemore, Buddy Guy, Chuck D and Dr John, as well as at least one prominent non-musician - President Barack Obama.
He's been working on it for two years, so it's no wonder Grohl sounds exhausted.
But Foos fans can start filling their boots, because the fun is just beginning.
As big a concept as Sonic Highways has become, Grohl says it started out even bigger.
"I was like, 'Am I just going to stroll into the studio and make another Foo Fighters album so we can hit the arenas and sell T-shirts?'
"No, we're going to do something different, something we haven't done before, and challenge the band," he says.
"At first, I thought it would be 12 episodes and we would go all over the world. We'd go to New Zealand, Iceland, Canada, Australia, South America. I took that to the band and they were like, 'Are you sure?'
"My manager said, 'Do you know how much that's going to cost?'"
Instead, Grohl narrowed the focus to America, demo-ed 40 new songs with the Foos, who chose eight of them "so we weren't just standing there with our dicks in our hands", and booked in time in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington, DC. The two Washingtons - city and state - loom large in Grohl's own musical history. He dropped out of high school at age 17 to be come the drummer in DC punk outfit Scream which toured as far away as Seattle. When Scream broke up he auditioned for a fledgling Seattle band consisting of guitarist-singer Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic.
Grohl has now been a Foo Fighter for 20 years. To begin recording the band's eighth album, he and band-mates Chris Shiflett, Pat Smear, Nate Mendel and Taylor Hawkins jumped on a plane to Chicago to record the first song. They had their fingers and toes crossed.
"One of the first questions everybody asked was, 'Are you going to adopt the musical personality of each city? Are you going to make a country song in Nashville and a jazz song in New Orleans?'
"I was like, 'Are you f***ing kidding? Do you know how terrible a record that would be? The Foo Fighters trying to play jazz? No way.'
"But it's inevitable that the environment influenced what we're doing, that's the premise of this entire series, that the environment, whether it's the rain or the accent or the room, should somehow influence the musical outcome."
With only six days scheduled in each city, and lyrics written on the fly, Grohl admits there were concerns over whether the concept would work. But their first session in Chicago helped settle the nerves and proved to Grohl they could pull it off. But what he didn't realise was just how close the process of making the HBO show and the album were.
Here's how Grohl describes an average week on their Sonic Highways roadtrip: "We had six days. The first day we'd load in all the equipment. The second day, we'd set up microphones and start recording so we'd have drums and guitars down.
At the end of the day, I'd go interview some people (for the TV show). Third day, bass down, some overdubs, interview some people. By the fifth day, the track would start sounding like a track, and we usually recorded the vocals on the sixth day.
"So I've interviewed 10 people, I take all of those transcripts to my hotel room, and a bottle of wine. I open the wine, lock the door, sit down and pick out all these words and phrases and sentences from all of these interviews. I put them on the left side of my journal, and the song on the right. I'd cut and paste these things together so it became a song about the episode. I'd sleep for five hours, walk back to the studio and record it. and I would sing it, and that's how we did every one of these songs."
Grohl's HBO show isn't just a documentary about the album's recording process.
Watch: Trailer: Foo Fighters - Sonic Highways
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"The idea is that we travel to eight cities in America and tell the story of American music by explaining the regional relevance of each one of these places and how the environment influenced the music in all these cities. Why did jazz come from New Orleans. Why did blues wind up in Chicago? What was it about Seattle that made it explode in the 90s?
"There are real reasons why all of these things happened. Some of them are cultural, some are historical, some are the geography, some of it's the weather and how it affects the instruments."
To tell those stories, Grohl became a journalist, making an extensive list of all the people he wanted to talk to, then spending 18 months crossing them off.
"Everybody was really open and excited about the idea of the show. All of these interviews were more conversations than anything. I don't sit with questions in my hand. We turn on the camera and start talking. My father was a journalist, my mother was a public school teacher, somewhere in my DNA I have the tools to do it. I sure as f*** didn't use them in high school, but now, sitting down, talking to someone, having a conversation, I found if you get deep enough into it, you forget about the camera and microphone and it's just two people talking. That's what I did, 100 f***ing times.
He still can't believe HBO - known for backing some of this century's best drama, including The Wire and The Sopranos - let him make a TV series. "When that HBO logo comes up, I get the chills. I think 'f***, they gave me a f***ing series. This is crazy'."
A new Foos album doesn't come without a Foos world tour, and Grohl says there are confirmed but yet to be disclosed plans to reach New Zealand. It would be rude not to. After all, he's still buzzing about the last time they played here.
"The New Zealand audience is the only audience in the world that has ever triggered a seismic event from the audience bouncing up and down so hard," he says.
"We played that speed stadium of yours (Auckland's Western Springs in December, 2011). The next morning it was in the newspapers, I sent the link to everyone I knew. I was more proud of that than anything else the band has done.
"We shook the f***ing Earth, man. So we're going to do it again ... there is a New Zealand tour coming."
Right after, one suspects, he's picked his kids up from school.
'Meaner, dirty, anthemic'
As the build-up to the Foo Fighters' eighth album continues, everyone is in the dark about what Sonic Highways actually sounds like.
Ahead of the release of the first single today, fans have heard more hype about the accompanying television show than the actual album, due out on November 10.
Even journalists tasked with interviewing the band haven't yet been given a sneak peek.
But frontman Dave Grohl says Sonic Highways' first single and opening track, Something from Nothing, will correct that imbalance.
"When it starts, you know it's the Foo Fighters," Grohl says. "When it ends, you're going, 'That was the f***ing Foo Fighters?' "That was the first song we recorded for the project, in Chicago, and we walked away from there thinking, 'Okay, we can do this, we're gonna pull it off'."
Watch: Foo Fighters feat. Ann and Nancy Wilson Kick It Out on Letterman
Something from Nothing sets the tone for what Grohl describes as a "cinematic" record that, despite its multiple recording sessions and large supporting cast, still manages a sense of cohesion.
"When we started this project, I said to everyone, 'At the end of the day, the most important thing is we have to make a great Foo Fighters record, because not everyone will see the TV show'," Grohl says.
"But because of the process, it's become something a little bit bigger. The rock songs get a little bit meaner, and the arrangements get wider. There are segments that are almost cinematic."
Grohl still enjoys writing stadium anthems, and despite only being eight tracks long, there are plenty of those, he says.
"I enjoy writing songs that I can share with thousands of people "I enjoy singing in a chorus with a room full of people and the lights up. That's when people are all connected by one thing.
"There's some pretty anthemic shit on this record, but when we dig in and get dirty it's still the Foo Fighters."
Who: Dave Grohl What: New Foo Fighters album Sonic Highways, out November 10 Also: Eight-part TV show of the same name premieres on The Edge TV (Freeview Channel 11, Sky TV Channel 114) this Sunday at 9pm.
The Foo Fighters feature on the cover of this week's TimeOut
