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Foo Fighters Ready Two New Songs For ‘Greatest Hits’
Foo Fighters will commemorate the group’s 15th anniversary with the Nov. 3 release of “Foo Fighters Greatest Hits” on Roswell/RCA. The group recorded two new songs for the set — “Word Forward” and “Wheels,” which the quartet debuted at a July 4 barbecue honoring military heroes at the White House — with producer Butch Vig at the Foos’ own 606 studio. They’ll join Grammy Award-winning songs such as “The Pretender,” “All My Life” and “Learn To Fly,” along with “Best Of You,” “Times Like These,” “My Hero, “Everlong” and others.
The release of “Greatest Hits” will come at a time the individual Foos are dispersed to other projects. Founder and leader Dave Grohl is working with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and Josh Home of Queens of the Stone Age in Them Crooked Vultures, whose debut album is due out in October. And bassist Nate Mendel is touring with the reunited Sunny Day Real Estate, which is also releasing remastered versions of 1994’s “Diary” and 1995’s “LP2,” each with two bonus tracks.
Mendel tells Billboard.com that the Foos’ hiatus is “kind of open-ended. We were pretty much planning to take this year off and start writing. This fall or winter we’ll probably start writing new Foo Fighters stuff.”
Mendel, meanwhile, is spending his time gearing up for the Sunny Day Real Estate tour, which kicks off Sept. 17 in Vancouver. “It’s fun to do something different. You need some variety,” Mendel says. “I’ve always loved those two Sunny Day records that I played on…and I like the other musicians in the band, so I wanted to just get together and re-live the whole experience.”
But Mendel and his Sunny Day are “on egg shells” about whether the reunion will lead to new music from the group. “Any old wounds from the past, no one wants to bring them up,” he explains. “We just want to focus on positive things, and you start writing new songs and that opens up a whole new can of worms. And those of us that are still playing in bands are pretty busy, too.
“One thing I didn’t know before we start this and I know now is we [i]could[/i] make another record. We get along. We still have a connection that would allow us to make music. So if the will and time is there, it’s a possibility at least.”
As for Grohl’s endeavor, Mendel says he started hearing about the group earlier this year and has had a chance to see Them Crooked Vultures in the studio. “They’re great,” Mendel says, adding with a laugh that “it’s a different dynamic, though. It’s interesting to see (Grohl) not being in charge.”