In a spooky old house – believed to be haunted – the Foo Fighters channeled the spirit of David Bowie on their “weird” new album. Guitarists Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett discuss the making of Medicine At Midnight and the inner workings of the Foos’ three-guitar team

Words Jonathan Horsley

How a record sounds is a product of the time, the place and the people who made it. And few appreciate this symbiotic relationship between place and sound as much as Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters frontman and guitarist directed the 2013 documentary Sound City about the LA studio of the same name.

A year later, he created the HBO series Sonic Highways, which explored the cities, venues and stories behind America’s music culture. And this sense of place has played a key role in Foo Fighters’ career.

In 1995, for the Foos’ self-titled debut – a solo project in all but name – the location was Seattle’s Robert Lang Studios, a home venue to get Grohl back in the game after the death of Kurt Cobain brought Nirvana to a tragic end. In 2001, when the Foos were coming apart at the seams, with the sessions for One By One stuttering to a halt, Grohl taking leave to play drums on tour with Queens Of The Stone Age, what saved the record – and perhaps the future of the Foo Fighters – was taking the whole production back to Grohl’s home studio in Alexandria, Virginia. In Studio 606, they got their groove back, thrashing it out in a week, those pent-up tensions turned into the white light and cleansing heat of rock ’n’ roll.

But for the making of the band’s new album, Medicine At Midnight, they chose a most unusual setting – in Encino, Los Angeles, a 1940s house that is said to be haunted, and where Grohl even set up a baby monitor to find evidence of the paranormal.

“You’ve seen Poltergeist, right? It was exactly like that!” laughs Chris Shiflett, one of the band’s three

guitarists alongside Grohl and Pat Smear. “One night, a weird little Southern lady came in, quoted the bible, and I got spit out into the living room covered in goo!” But as Smear adds, a little more seriously: “It was definitely weird and creepy. I’ll tell you that much.”