Dave Grohl was back in Virginia, in the basement of his own house in Alexandria, with a microphone and a problem. The Foo Fighters frontman had just lost a guitarist and a record label, and he was about to make the album that would define the band's second life. On November 2, 1999, that record, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, was released in the United States on Roswell and RCA.
A trio after Franz Stahl's exit
It was the third Foo Fighters studio album, but almost everything around it had changed. Guitarist Franz Stahl was fired after about a year in the group, so Grohl decided to record as a trio, without a second guitarist. In the basement, only three people played: Grohl, drummer Taylor Hawkins, and bassist Nate Mendel. This was the first Foo Fighters album to list Hawkins as the drummer, though Grohl still played the drum parts on some songs himself.
The setting was as homemade as it gets. Grohl's basement studio was named Studio 606, after the apartment number of his father. Producer Adam Kasper helped him wire the place up, and the band recorded there from March to June 1999 with no record company representatives around. Grohl later said the hardest part was getting a good sound without tools like Pro Tools and AutoTune.
The album almost didn't happen at a major label. Foo Fighters had left Capitol Records after the label's president, Gary Gersh, departed, and There Is Nothing Left to Lose became the first album fully released and promoted by RCA. That meant no one from the label was in the basement checking on progress. The band produced the record themselves with Kasper, and that freedom shows in the looseness of the playing.
Chili, whiskey and the album title
Grohl has called this album his favorite in the Foo Fighters discography. He said the recording was 'completely based on melody' and the process was serene. In 2006 he remembered eating chili, drinking beer and whiskey, and recording vocals until birdsong started bleeding into the microphone. That relaxed mood came from a specific place: the title, he explained, came from a conversation about the feeling of finally giving up after a hard period and realizing you have nothing left to lose.
In 2006 he remembered eating chili, drinking beer and whiskey, and recording vocals until birdsong started bleeding into the microphone.
The cover made the point with a simple image: the band's initials tattooed on Grohl's neck. First pressings of the CD even included a temporary tattoo matching the one on the cover, so fans could wear the album's surrender on their own skin. It was a small, strange piece of marketing for a record that had been made almost entirely outside the usual industry machinery.
The bet paid off in the biggest way possible. In 2001, There Is Nothing Left to Lose won the Grammy for Best Rock Album, the first Grammy in Foo Fighters history. Grohl said he was proud of the win because the album had been recorded in a basement, in a homemade studio. He suggested that year they were probably the only band to win a Grammy for an album recorded for free in a basement. The same night also brought a second Grammy, when the video for "Learn to Fly" won Best Short Form Music Video. Grohl later said he remained proud of the win because the album had been made in a basement, in a homemade studio.
That victory changed how the band saw itself. The album marked a shift away from their earlier work toward a softer, more experimental sound, and the Grammy proved that direction had serious weight. Twenty-seven years after its US release, the basement record stands as the moment Foo Fighters stopped sounding like a side project and started sounding like a band with nothing to prove and everything to gain.