I wanted to see how little time it could take me to track 15 songs, complete with overdubs and everything. I did the basic tracks in two and a half days, meaning I was literally running from instrument to instrument, using mostly first takes on everything. All vocals and rough mixes were finished on schedule: one week.

Then the question of what to do with it. I made my first mistake: my trip to the duplication lab downtown for 100 copies. My next mistake was my blind generosity. That fucking tape spread like the Ebola virus, leaving me with an answering machine tape full of record company jive.

I jammed around with a few people before meeting Nate Mendel. His girlfriend was a good friend of my wife, and they joined us for a Thanksgiving party at my house. It was the night we discovered my house was haunted, but that's a different story altogether.

Not long after meeting Nate, I gave a tape to Pat Smear. I knew that the band would need two guitars, but didn't think that Pat would want to commit to anything (or that he would even like the music). To my surprise, not only did he like the tape, he expressed interest in joining up. I just wanted to find the perfect drummer.

Enter William Goldsmith. Will was in Nate's band, Sunny Day Real Estate. The band had become extremely popular in Seattle and had an album out on Sub Pop. Though I had never seen or heard them, I knew a little about them. I saw them play their last few shows in Seattle and was blown away by Nate and Will. So you can imagine my first reaction when I heard the band was calling it quits. I gave the two of them tapes through my wife's friend and prayed they'd enjoy them.

I didn't want this to be some ridiculous solo project. I sure as fuck didn't consider Pat, Nate and William my backing band. I realized this was a bizarre foundation for a band, but that's exactly what my goal was: To have another band. We got together and it was soon apparent that this was to be that next band. I wanted everyone to have the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do within the songs, each member as important as the next.

These days, Chris Shiflett has replaced Pat Smear and also Franz Stahl on guitar and Taylor Hawkins has replaced William Goldsmith on drums.

Foo Fighters are a multi-album, multi-Grammy Award winning band.