Prior to recording, guitarist
Franz Stahl was fired after about a year as frontman
Dave Grohl felt the guitarist had not found his place in the band. Grohl decided the band would be a three-piece for the record: himself along with bassist
Nate Mendel and drummer
Taylor Hawkins. Having just exhausted themselves in the studio making the last record
The Colour and the Shape and losing two band members in the process, Grohl decided to buy a house in
Alexandria, Virginia and make the record in its basement without any record company presence during production. This was helped by the Foo Fighters' leaving
Capitol Records after president Gary Gersh left the label. Grohl named his home facility Studio 606, at first saying, "It's just one of those numbers that's everywhere. Like when you wake up in the middle of the night and it's 6:06, or you see a license plate that says 606." He later told the full story of the number's significance in a July 20, 2020, Instagram post: spending the evening with his father in 1985, he received a particularly searing "what do you want to do with your life" lecture that defines the bittersweet moment he finally communicated to his father the depth of his commitment to becoming a professional musician, before sneaking out. "606" was his father's apartment number. The album is the first to feature Hawkins on drums. He performed on the majority of album, while leaving the faster songs for Grohl to play. The liner notes of the album do not specify who plays on which songs, although Hawkins states "Aurora" and "M.I.A." are good examples of his playing style, and that he plays the "jazzier" drums parts. Grohl set up the studio with the help of
Adam Kasper, who eventually co-produced the album. The biggest challenge, according to Grohl, was making the record sound good without computer programs such as
Pro Tools or
AutoTune. Dave Grohl notes that he had: "[...] been living in Los Angeles for about a year and a half, just being a drunk, getting fucked up every night and doing horrible shit, and I'd finally gotten sick of that new car smell. So I bought this great house in
Virginia and told everyone I was building a studio in the basement. It was literally a basement with sleeping bags on the walls!" In 2006, Grohl stated: "It was all about just settling into the next phase of your life, that place where you can sit back and relax because there had been so much crazy shit in the past three years. At that point it was me, Taylor and Nate and we were best friends. It was one of the most relaxing times of my whole life. All we did was eat chili, drink beer and whiskey and record whenever we felt like it. When I listen to that record it totally brings me back to that basement. I remember how it smelled and how it was in the Spring so the windows were open and we'd do vocals until you could hear the birds through the microphone. And more than any other record I've ever done, that album does that to me." ==Title and artwork==