The Colour and The Shape - Background

Background

The album was the debut of Foo Fighters as a band, as frontman Dave Grohl had recorded all of the first album by himself with the exception of one guitar part by Greg Dulli. The Colour and the Shape was produced by Gil Norton, who was perhaps best known for his work with the Pixies. Norton was very demanding of the band's performance, eventually leading bassist Nate Mendel to enhance his musical formation. Grohl also stated that "it was frustrating and it was hard and it was long, but at the end of the day you listened back to what you'd done and you understood why you had to do it one million times." Grohl stated that he wanted to go back to the studio as "we didn't want people to feel were just another side project." The songs on the record were composed during sound checks during the extensive touring that the band went through for the previous eighteen months. Mendel stated "the germ of every song is Dave's", with the frontman providing a riff and the basic structure, and afterwards the band would jam and each member would contribute to a part of the song. Over the course of the making of the album, Grohl's own marriage to photographer Jennifer Youngblood ultimately ended in divorce.