There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding the Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth that was released this month. The band’s drummer Taylor Hawkins openly said that he did not want the James Moll-directed documentary released because he’s not at all comfortable with “public openness”. Lead singer, and this year’s NME God Like Genius Award recipient, Dave Grohl was also hesitant about the band seeing the film because “…we wind up talking about things that we just don’t talk about to each others’ faces” and he thought it could potentially change the band dynamic and their relationships.
On Friday 22nd April Back and Forth aired, advertisement-free, on TV3. It was a fantastic one-hour, 45-minute film from Oscar-winning director James Moll that focused purely on the relationships between the band members, both past and present; their idols; the line-up changes; and the death of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, as this contributed to the establishment of the band.
There are also moments when we see a domesticated Dave Grohl mopping floors and getting up early to feed his two children, which does kind of put a dent in his rock ‘n’ roll, binge-drinking image. The movie takes a fly-on-the-wall approach when filming the recording process for their current album Wasting Light and also has interviews with the current Foos line-up, producer Butch Vig and previous members guitarist Franz Stahl and drummer William Goldsmith, both of whom were let go under tumultuous circumstances.
If you are a Food fan, I recommend you see this doco. There is a lot of never-seen-before footage and very laugh-worthy photographs of the band when they were all young and dorky. No official release date has been announced for Back and Forth cinema screenings in New Zealand if you missed it on Friday, but hopefully a DVD release will follow soon.