Dave Grohl has been tinkering with a Foo Fighters riff for 25 years that’ll finally see the light of day on the band’s newest album, and bassist Nate Mendel told us all about it.
Having talked to guitarist Chris Shiflett and bassist Nate Mendel about how the Foo Fighters’ latest single ‘Shame Shame’ came into existence (spoiler: it started with a few clicks) and what to expect from the band’s upcoming 10th album Medicine At Midnight, I had one more thing to ask the pair that piqued my interest months ago: Did we hear that riff Dave Grohl has been working on for 25 years on ‘Shame Shame’ or is it on another song in the album?
For context, Grohl has been working on a guitar riff for 25 years and it will finally be presented to the world on Medicine At Midnight. However, I can confirm that we didn’t hear it on ‘Shame Shame’.
“Nope, but it’s in there! Almost every record that we’ve written and recorded, this riff had a moment where it was going to be some song on that record and it finally made it [on Medicine At Midnight],” says Nate.
As for what song it’ll appear on, Nate confirms it will be on a new song called ‘Cloudspotter’, which will apparently be the most surprising banger on the Foo Fighters’ new album.
“It’s called ‘Cloudspotter’,” says the bassist. “That song might be the most surprising song on the record, I guess that guitar riff just needed to find a dance-y little home.”
While Nate couldn’t exactly play or vocalise a snippet of ‘Cloudspotter’ to me over the phone, he did go into what the song is like. In summary: it is fucking heavy.
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“It’s cool because with rock music the adjective you use is ‘heavy’ right? If you want a riff, you want a heavy riff. You want the drums to sound heavy, you want the mix to sound heavy, just ‘heavy’,” says Nate. “We have go-to ways of getting to ‘heavy’ and the thing I fucking love about the song ‘Cloudspotter’ is that it’s heavy as fuck but it’s got none of the typical avenues of getting there. It’s like dance heavy.”
Definitely sounds like one song to keep an eye on when Medicine At Night comes out on February 5th, 2021.
For those wanting more exclusive Foo Fighters content, check out our chat with Chris and Nate about how ‘Shame Shame‘ came into existence and how the band approached Medicine At Midnight, as well as our chat with Chris over at Rolling Stone Australia about how COVID-19 affected the album’s release and performing live again after lockdown.
Check out ‘Shame Shame’ by Foo Fighters:
