Dave Grohl & Taylor Hawkins Talks About The Origins of “Foo Fighters”
via Team Coco / Youtube
Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins and Dave Grohl had an appearance on Conan where they talked about the origins of the band’s name.
Conan recalled when Grohl once said,
“If I thought the Foo Fighters was ever going to be this big, I’d have come up with a better name for the band”
Then he asked why the singer is not impressed with the name Foo Fighters? Grohl explained:
“You know I’m really happy with what’s happened over the last 16 years, we’re really lucky and I love being in this band. But honestly, Foo Fighters is the stupidest f***ing band name ever. It’s a horrible name.”
Conan and the audience laughed and Grohl continued:
“The reason I called it Foo Fighters was because the first thing that I recorded was, I did it by myself, I played all the instruments, I played drums, guitar, bass, sang, and I made this cassette, but I didn’t want people to know it was me because I didn’t want people to think ‘oh that guy from Nirvana is trying to start another band,’ so I just called it Foo Fighters because it sounded like a group of people, and I read it in a UFO book or something like that, but it stuck and it stayed all this time and I just can’t believe…
If I knew that we would be here on your show 16 years later…”
Conan then jokingly said:
“You know you’ve made it when you’re here.”
As for Hawkins, he thought the band’s name “was really cool,” and Conan asked him if he likes it, he said:
“Yeah, so I must be really dipshit.”
Conan then proceed to talk about the band’s documentary 2011 Back and Forth, where it was pointed out that a lot of every rock band goes through a lot of lineup changes. Hawkins was the second drummer of Foo Fighters replacing William Goldsmith.
Grohl stated:
“I mean, you know, the way we function is really not that different than any garage band that lives in your neighborhood. We’re normal people, we’re friends, and we get together, we write songs on our own and we recorded this album in our garage and so you know, we’re just, we’re just kids right, playing music.”
Watch the full interview below.
