Foo Fighters are back and kicking for the a position like top debut album, as they turned right on Sonic Highways with their latest record, released on 10 November 2014! Competition is harsh (as the timing overlaps legendary Pink Floyd’s last album The Endless River), but the fighters are no fools and their latest album proves that entirely.
The release of an eight songs album may not sound that stirring, but when we add to it a TV documentary series created by HBO, it most definitely builds up to a rocking level. Dave Grohl, front-man, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter is the brain behind the concept of Sonic Highways album and the director and producer behind the similarly entitled TV series. As guest of an Absolute Radio interview, the leader reveals the entire creative process of the band’s latest project and relates the experience with past releases.
According to the artist, the previous album, Wasting Light (released in 2011), was mostly made in Grohl’s garage and the challenge for the latest was that he wanted ‘’to take the band out of our comfort zone’’, considering it an experiment of how the environment would influence the process of creation. As Dave had previously directed the documentary Sound City (2013), he used his former experience in the case of Sonic Highways, and chose to make not a single movie, but an eight episodes series based on their journey in different cities and studios, stating that ‘’the environment changes the shape of a sound’’ (the interviewer’s remark).
When asked to describe the fashion in which the surroundings can influence music, Dave Grohl pointed that there are numerous factors which trigger the difference and help support the final outcome: ‘’It could be the room, it could be the studio, it could be the board, it could be the city, it could be the accent or the tempo of the city. It could be the geography or the history or the culture of the place. So it turned into kind of a bigger conversation of regional music (…)’’.
By supporting the idea that music development is primarily related to non-musical concepts (such as important historic events –black emancipation, in this case), the song writer and director describes Sonic Highways not only as a record which turned into a TV series, but also as a TV series which turned into a documentary of musical history. He furthermore exemplifies: ‘’So the blues that Muddy Waters was playing in the South on the plantation was way different than what he was doing when he got up to Chicago, because he got an amplifier and it turned into Chicago blues’’.
The director Dave Grohl interviewed a large series of (not only) musical personalities, and Blabbermouth mentions some widely-acclaimed names such as ‘’Slash, Dan Auerbach of the BLACK KEYS, LL Cool J, Bonnie Raitt, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Pharrell Williams, Joan Jett, CHEAP TRICK ‘s Rick Nielsen, Paul Stanley of KISS, Joe Walsh, ZZ TOP’s Billy F. Gibbons, Macklemore, Buddy Guy and even President Barack Obama’’.
Sonic Highways – the eight studio album of the band – was released on 10 November 2014, whereas Sonic Highways – the TV documentary series debuted on 17 October 2014. It is now left for the audience to decide which of the two ‘’variables’’ will remain into the mind of the majority the longest and why.