The Foo Fighters invited a handful of guest musicians to be featured on their new album Concrete and Gold. The artists ranged from Paul McCartney, Justin Timberlake, Shawn Stockman (Boyz II Men) and more. The selections seemed random but it seemed to be based on artists who were walking around in the same studio. Their overall ninth studio album is currently at spot one on Billboard’s top 200 list, proving these collaborations were an overall success.
Dave Grohl recently explained to UK’s Planet Rock how the band’s open door policy was inspired by Pantera.
“Basically, the way the Foo Fighters work, we get along with everybody. For years, we’ve always been that band, when we get backstage at a festival, the first thing I do is I pick up a bottle of whiskey and I just walk around banging on dressing-room doors to see who’s fun, to see who’s cool. It could be Tricky, or it could be Muse or it could be… whatever — I just look for pals.
Actually, that’s something I learnt from Pantera. Back in the day, we did a show with Pantera and we became friends and I would go see them on tour all the time. And I realized that you’d be backstage at a Pantera show and there’d be, like, Marilyn Manson is in that corner, and Kato Kaelin is in that corner, and Britney Spears is in …..Everybody loved to hang with Pantera. So, to me, that was the coolest thing about them — they were the sweetest people and they had this open-door policy.
But also with our band, we don’t really plan too much when it comes to making music. So when you’re at a studio, like the studio where we recorded, every week there was someone else in there. Like, Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple was down the hall with Jason Bonham, and then Joe Bonamassa and then Lady Gaga is over there and then Wolf Alice is over here and Rufus Wainwright is over there. So the three months we were there, we were meeting all these people, we were drinking in the parking lot, we were outside smoking, and you just make friends, and it’s literally that easy. Like i’m sitting in the parking lot working on a song and I see the guy from Boyz II Men and I’m like, ‘hey man!’ And we started talking. The song we were doing that day, I wanted there to be choir on it. I was like, ‘I want a choir on this song, can you build a choir?’”
Watch the full interview below:
