Pat Smear Shares How Foo Fighters Have Freshened Things Up For Album #9

If there was a list of people that could get away with acting a little entitled during an interview, Pat Smear would be on it. He's a long-running guitarist for Foo Fighters and a punk legend for his time with Germs. Oh, and there's that band Nirvana that he played in, too, at the direct invitation of Kurt Cobain. So, Smear could act put on the full 'rock star' act if he wanted to; except he doesn't. He's probably one of the nicest people you'll ever talk to, laughing, joking and willing to poke fun at himself.

Foo Fighters newest album, Concrete & Gold, is out later this week. There are distinct differences between their newest work and their last few, with Concrete & Gold offering a broader range of sounds from the group. When asked if the band were deliberately trying to challenge themselves, Smear answers, "Yes, for every album," laughing.

"We try for every album and usually... I always think, 'Wow, this one's really different,' and then about six months will go by, I'll play it and I'll be like, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, it sounds like Foo Fighters.' And you know, I finally just decided we have the same five guys playing the same instruments, it's the same guy writing the songs, ahhhh, it's going to sound like the same band no matter what you do, so I think you're telling me that we succeeded this time?"

So, what can the same five guys playing the same instruments do to create something different? Smear credits frontman Dave Grohl for changing things up.

"His first idea for this record was he said, 'Don't bring the same stuff when we start rehearsing. Don't bring your same stuff. Bring a different guitar, play guitars you don't usually play, bring amps you don't normally use, just bring different stuff.' And that was the first thing we did, for a small step anyway.

"And we just continued with that attitude kind of through the whole thing and then we got a producer which we haven't worked with before and Greg [Kurstin] comes from the same place as all of us. Punk rock kid, played in weird indie bands and stuff, and then he moved onto jazz and he now makes pop records and stuff like that, so he has... you know, he started the same place as us but he went in a different direction, so we had the common ground of our past for music but he's definitely a different element and that was helpful too.

"We were on some mission when we did Wasting Light in Dave's garage and when we did Sonic Highways in other studios, places that sometimes weren't even studios, that we brought gear and said, 'Let's turn it into a studio,' and that was a... We thought let's do it in different places and that's what's going to make it different and it was kind of an experiment like, 'Will it make a difference if we do a song in different cities?' or things like that. Whereas this one, we went as far as the usual, which for us is the unusual, which is just go to a proper recording studio and make a record," Smear laughs.

"And I don't really know how much of the location and the gear and all that stuff makes that much difference, I really just think it's the people and the people you're working with, and we worked with new people and they're great people and they're great people to hang out with, which I think is the most important thing, but also great at what they do, and I think that makes a change more than an attitude or a place."

Foo Fighters are heading back to Australia next January for the Concrete & Gold tour and the band certainly have a strong affinity with the country and their Aussie fans.

"I can't speak for everyone but when I first went to Australia, I was like, 'Oh, it's like home.' It feels like home, the people are like the people at home. It's kind of just a more beautiful version of where we live and it just felt really comfortable," says Smear. "And I don't feel like that almost anywhere else, I mean even, there's very few places anywhere, even in the US, where I feel like, 'Oh, this is like my home,' and Australia was just one of those places... I don't know if that helps or not but that's how I always feel there."