Foo Fighters’ frontman Dave Grohl is playing favourites by revealing that he thinks lead guitarist, Chris Shiflett, is the most accomplished member of the band.
“Chris [Shiflett] is, without a doubt, the most accomplished musician in the band. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t joined,” Grohl stated in a chat with EW.
Grohl adds of Foo Fighters keyboardist, Rami Jaffee, “And Rami is such a free-floating peace and love wacky f—ing wanderer. It’s like, sarongs and headwraps. And he became part of it too. He just fit.”
Before joining Foo Fighters, Shiflett was a member of No Use for a Name and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. He then joined Foo Fighters as the lead guitarist when Pat Smear left the band in 1999.
Despite Grohl naming Shiflett as the most accomplished member of Foo Fighter’s the lead guitarist was originally ironically scared of being fired from the band before playing his first show.
“I was wary of Pat, I think anybody would have been. He almost came back after I’d been in the band a month. And I would have been out at that point, it wasn’t like now. I didn’t have my footing” Shiflett shared in an interview,
In the EW interview, Shiflett reflected on his audition to join the band.
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“I went down to L.A. [for the audition[ and I remember I got there a little early and I could hear them inside, so I knew that I was listening to somebody else’s audition.
So I sat there for what felt like an eternity, but it was probably about 15 minutes, just psyching myself out going “Oh, f—. They’re in there just vibing with whoever’s in there that totally just killed it. That guy’s for sure getting it.”
And then the door opened and the guy walked out, and I went in there to do my audition and Dave just said, “Oh my God Chris, you saved us! That guy wouldn’t leave.”
With twelve Grammys under their belt, there’s no denying the epic success of the Foo Fighters – a sentiment that Shiflett isn’t shy about agreeing with.
“It sounds terrible to say, but we kind of don’t really ever have bad shows, you know? Because people aren’t there by accident. They come out because they want to hear the songs and sing along. There’s a lot of us on stage, and it’s loud as f—. You really have to mess it up bad to drag the ship down.”
