Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by Massimo M.
Foo Fighters is the title of the first album released by Dave Grohl in 1995.
The Foo Fighters were initially an experimental project of Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, a kind of cathartic instrument to channel his emotional energy accumulated after dealing with the devastating loss of his bandmate and friend Kurt Cobain in 1994.
Many thought that Grohl would have almost disappeared following the end of Nirvana, but the 25-year-old drummer pulled out of the hat, proving that he was not only a follower of Cobain, one of the greatest second acts in rock history. Second act which begins precisely with the release of the first homonymous album, Foo Fighters, on July 4, 1995.
To start so as not to have aftermaths with the past, Grohl decided to found his own label, Roswell, and to release the album without names or photos, attributing it to a mysterious new band called Foo Fighters. The name derives from the nickname that the allied aeronautical pilots in the Second World War used to define unidentified flying objects.
Released without much fanfare, Foo Fighters seemed to be the promising debout album of a band that had well understood the lesson of Nirvana, how strange!, and Hüsker Dü. In reality, as we know, it was instead an operation carried out by a one-man-band who had played and recorded the full album.
Nine of the album’s tracks were composed before or during Grohl’s experience with Nirvana, as evidenced by some demos recorded by Grohl himself on his 8-track recorder. The only compositions made after Cobain’s death are This is a Call, I’ll Stick Around, X-Static and Wattershed. Musically, the compositions follow the hard rock trend along the lines of the songs by Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit and Heart-Shaped Box.
After recording for the album, Grohl undertook to find some suitable members to form the group. The choice fell on Pat Smear on guitar, former collaborator of Nirvana, and on two ex-members of the emo group Sunny Day Real Estate, Nate Mendel on bass and William Goldsmith on drums. While they did not contribute to the Foo Fighters recording sessions, they do appear in the album booklet.
The first Foo Fighters album is quite surprising both for the energy it releases and for the melodic taste and freshness. The songs move from one musical genre to another, mixing them together, and revealing to the world Grohl’s incredible musical malleability and culture, which until now had been obscured behind the big figure of Cobain.
If you want to find fault with these early compositions by Grohl, it is a certain lack of identity, a lack of homogeneity of the whole, but the former Nirvana drummer’s intent was never to revolutionize rock.
Foo fighters was released in the summer of 1995 and was received quite well by the critics, who however did not spare the, probably inevitable, comparisons with Nirvana. The public success instead comes a little later with the publication of the third single Big Me, which thanks to a particularly apt video, transforms Grohl & Company in a sort of antithesis of Nirvana.
As we saw earlier the name Foo Fighters was taken from the description that WWII aircraft pilots used to describe UFO sightings. This theme of alluding to extraterrestrials continued with the choice of the name of the record label founded by Grohl, Roswell Records, which is a clear reference to the city of Roswell, located in New Mexico, known for the Roswell UFO from 1947.
In fact, it is hypothesized that in 1947 an alien aircraft crashed near the town of Roswell and that the American government took possession of all the remains of this accident, hiding them inside the infamous Area 51.
Even the album cover, created by Grohl’s ex-wife, photographer Jennifer Youngblood, insists on the science fiction theme. The image chosen for the cover reproduces the XZ-38 disintegrating pistol of Buck Rogers, hero of a famous science fiction series. Some detractors dismissed the gun on the cover as an act of insensitivity, as Kurt Cobain shot himself dead, but Grohl downplayed it by saying it was a mere coincidence.
Foo fighters is certainly not Grohl’s best work but it is an essential piece in the recording history of Foo fighters, a must in your rock vinyl collection
Foo fighters 1995 track list
1. This Is a Call 3:53
2. I’ll Stick Around 3:52
3. Big Me 2:12
4. Alone + Easy Target 4:05
5. Good Grief 4:01
6. Floaty 4:30
7. Weenie Beenie 2:46
8. Oh, George 3:00
9. For All the Cows 3:30
10. X-Static 4:13
11. Wattershed 2:16
12. Exhausted 5:45
In 2007, a Japanese reissue with two bonus tracks was released
13. Winnebago 4:13
14. Podunk 3:04
Foo fighters discography
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