Midway through Dave Grohl’s appearance on “Hot Ones,” host Sean Evans revealed that he read about a Foo Fighters album that, after being recorded on analog tape, could not be manipulated after the fact. (Evans was referring to 2011’s “Wasting Light.”) He then asked the frontman if he agrees with the opinion that the overproduction of songs could defeat the purpose of making music. After thinking it over for a bit, Grohl said that he doesn’t necessarily feel that way about other artists and their songs, but agrees with the statement when it comes to his band’s own music. “I like imperfection,” he explained. “I like to hear albums where you can hear a hand going up and down the strings … that’s the human element of music. I dig that.”
After taking a few more seconds to, well, collect his thoughts, Grohl expounded on his belief that the human element is important when he and his bandmates are recording music. While he admitted liking bands that are “really rigid” and “mechanical,” he said that as far as Foo Fighters are concerned, the band is at its best when its music “sounds like us” and is “raw.”
Sounding raw may be well and good for one of the biggest rock bands of the past 25 years, but what do the fans think of this rather informal recording rule?
