Dave Grohl told Mojo in a new interview that the recording sessions for the upcoming Foo Fighters album were haunted.
The band recorded its 10th studio LP in a 70-year-old house in Encino, California, with Grohl revealing, “When we walked into the house in Encino, I knew the vibes were definitely off but the sound was f**king on. We started working there and it wasn’t long before things started happening.”
The Foos' main man said that the band would come back to the studio to find the guitars detuned, the settings on the engineering board changed, tracks missing and new tracks — often just an open mic recording an empty room — appearing on the recording software.
The group attempted to document the phenomena by taking video of the studio when they weren’t there, with Grohl saying, “We started to see things on the nest cam that we couldn’t explain.”
Grohl says he asked the homeowner about the house's past, but is not allowed to reveal what he learned. He explained, “I had to sign a f**king non-disclosure agreement with the landlord because he’s trying to sell the place. So, I can’t give away what happened there in the past but these multiple occurrences over a short period of time made us finish the album as quickly as we could.”
Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel told us a while back how the band's songwriting process works: “It's really been pretty consistent over the years. Dave writes the songs, and about half the time he'll do a demo on his own, and the other half of the time he'll come in and just play it on guitar. Then (he) shows it to the band and then we sit around and play it and figure out, you know, what kind of song is it gonna be. Is it a country song? Metal song? You know, what the dynamic is, arrangement, tempo, that kind of stuff. We help him finish it out.”
The band has yet to announce a title or release date for the new album, which will mark the band's 25th anniversary. Other events commemorating that milestone, including a spring tour, are on hold for now due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
