The tragic loss of Taylor Hawkins has us looking back on his incredible legacy of music – and Wasting Light with the Foo Fighters is high on that list of achievements.
Released 11 years ago today (12 April) it's in the very upper echelon of Foos albums for us; a tour-de-force of their strengths in combining hooks with hard rock. The band also made the step of going old school with it; cutting the album to tape in Dave Grohl's Encino, Los Angeles garage and staying strictly analogue until the post-mastering stage.
Grohl's aim was to record an album that defined the band, in the way AC/DC's Back In Black and Metallica's Black Album helped define them. "It might not be their best album, but it's the one people identify the band with the most," Grohl told Kerrang at the time. "You take all of the things that people consider your band's signature characteristics and just amplify them and make one simple album with that."
So when the band announced they'd play it in full at their own Studio 606 it made perfect sense. The camera on Hawkins' kit gives us an intimate view on the passion and craft behind his playing, and how much his backing vocals contributed to the band.
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"There was water dripping onto the gear and we got interrupted by a cave diver": How Mandy, Indiana recorded their debut album in caves, crypts and shopping malls
