There Is Nothing Left To Lose - Background

Background

Prior to recording, guitarist Franz Stahl was fired from the band, as frontman Dave Grohl felt the guitarist had not found his place in the band. At that point, Grohl decided that the band would just be a three piece for the record, along with bassist Nate Mendel and drummer Taylor Hawkins. Having just slaved themselves in the studio making the last record The Colour and the Shape and losing two band members in the process, he decided to buy a home 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 baptized his home facility Studio 606 - "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" - and set it up 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 that:

"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 chilli, 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."

Grohl has stated before that the band would have "a barbeque every day after recording."

The title emerged to Grohl as he talked to a friend "about when you experience these emotions after you've been through a long, difficult period and you finally give into this feeling that, quite simply, there is nothing left to lose. It can seem... positive, desperate and reckless." The frontman also stated that it translated the band's mood during production: "we just wrote off and played like all bets were off. No one was forcing us to be there, so it had to be fun - and the songs had to be the best we could possibly come up with at the time."