Foo Fighters Release 'Truck-Stop' Greatest Hits Album

Posted on Nov 3rd 2009 12:00PM by Steve Baltin
Comments

After churning out hits for nearly 15 years, the Foo Fighters' 'Greatest Hits' compilation was inevitable. "We knew this album was going to come out for a long time -- they've been asking us for a while. It stills feels premature, but we waited until now," frontman Dave Grohl tells Spinner from the band's San Fernando Valley 606 studio.

Grohl says the band considered a different title, courtesy of music mogul Clive Davis. "The first time Clive Davis heard 'In Your Honor,' he called up and said, 'It's an embarrassment of riches.' And so that's what we considered calling the greatest hits," Grohl recalls. And? "F--- that. I want a greatest hits, like the Outfield's greatest hits or the Hooters' greatest hits. I don't want to think it's another Hooters record -- I want to think it's their f---ing hits."

That thinking extended to the song selection as well. "We probably have our own greatest hits, each one of us in our head," drummer Taylor Hawkins says. "I think one song that all of us love is 'Aurora,' and there are a couple of songs like that I think that weren't hits, weren't even really out as singles, but we see as some of the greatest music we've ever made. In a way [the compilation] does but doesn't necessarily represent the greatest hits."

According to Grohl, the song selection was actually an easy process. "We didn't really have to listen to the whole catalog to decide what's gonna go on the album. I think the idea was to make a truck-stop greatest hits, like when you were f---ing 19-years-old on the road in a van and you stop at a f---ing Citgo to get gas and cigarettes and you look at the little next thing to the cash register and it's got Cheap Trick's greatest hits," he says. "I don't want f---ing deep cuts."

With that in mind, the band made sure fans know this is the truck-stop collection via the album artwork. "Even when we were talking about the art, we thought in mind of like some of the greatest hits, it's just a picture of the name," Hawkins says. "It's gotta look like a greatest hits. It's almost like Dave was saying -- we deserve a greatest hits."

"I don't even know if we deserve it, but I want a greatest hits," Grohl says.

Hawkins understands. "Don't want to get arty on the greatest hits -- it's a f---ing greatest hits," he says. "Wait 'til the box set. That's a big one."

Listen to the Foo Fighters' 'Greatest Hits'