At 57 years old, rock legend Dave Grohl still holds tight to the rebellious 13-year-old punk kid he once was – a raw, unapologetic energy that bleeds through every chord of Foo Fighters’ 12th full-length studio album, *Your Favourite Toy*. In a new interview, Grohl opens up about the record, the band’s long healing journey following the 2022 death of iconic drummer Taylor Hawkins, and the personal upheaval that shaped one of the group’s hardest, fastest projects in a decade.
Grohl describes *Your Favourite Toy* as a powder keg, a burning rush of diesel fuel, even a spicy, layered jambalaya – a deliberate return to the post-grunge and punk roots that launched the band in the 1990s. Cut quickly in just a matter of weeks, the album grew out of years of low-key experimentation: Grohl had demoed more than 50 tracks, often writing late at night, pulling influences from across the musical spectrum from trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack to prog-rock icons Pink Floyd and hardcore punk trailblazers Bad Brains. It was only when he stumbled across a sequence of 10 raw, high-energy demos that aligned with the music the band grew up loving that the project clicked into place.
“This is how our band sounds,” confirmed bass guitarist Nate Mendel. “We can do other stuff too, but this feels comfortable.” For Grohl, forcing a more polished, mature sound would feel like wearing an ill-fitting suit to a formal event – a disconnect from his core identity. “It’s like when you get invited to a formal event and you try to put on something really nice and clean. I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘That’s not me. I look like a stoner in court getting charged for some sort of misdemeanour marijuana offence!’” he joked.
Recorded against a backdrop of profound personal upheaval, the album carries unflinching emotional weight. Its sharp, slashing guitar riffs and scorched, raw vocals capture turmoil, paranoia and uncertainty that Grohl has navigated in recent years. On the opening track *Caught In The Echo*, Grohl screams repetitive lines “Decide, decide, decide, decide / Do I? Do I? Do I? Do I?” – a whirlwind of intrusive thoughts that captures the paralysis of being stuck at a crossroads. Another standout track, *Of All People*, is a furious diatribe born from a chance encounter: Grohl ran into a drug dealer he had known in 1990s Seattle, a meeting that stirred up complicated emotions. Grohl, who has remained largely drug-free since he turned 20 (save for a 2010 caffeine overdose hospitalization), said he felt conflicted over the run-in: glad the man had survived, but angry about the harm the drug trade brought to so many people he knew. He wrote the track that night and recorded it the next morning in the small studio above his garage, capturing that raw moment of emotion exactly as it hit.
That spontaneous, capture-the-moment approach became the album’s core creative ethos. “You write something really quickly, and the next day you record it and it’s done. That’s the photograph, that’s the one moment that you catch,” Grohl explained.
The record also grapples with another public personal struggle: Grohl’s 2022 admission that he had fathered a child outside of his marriage, a revelation that shocked fans who had long hailed Grohl as “the nicest man in rock.” At the time, he released a public statement saying he planned to be a supportive parent to the child, and that he was committed to regaining the trust of his wife and existing children. The track *Unconditional* appears to chronicle his efforts to repair those fractured relationships. Grohl sings, “I’ll find a better way / To explain this to you… Under one condition, though / It’s unconditional,” and described the track as a mournful reflection on deep regret.
“When you write a song like that, and you listen to it back, you kind of understand how you feel in yourself. And that makes it easier to use those words outside of the song, right?” he said, declining to share specific details of the situation, noting that some deeply personal matters remain private. “This band was born out of the pain of losing Kurt [Cobain] and Nirvana, so we’ve always relied on music to help us through difficult times – and it has certainly done that in my life in the last year and a half.”
Beyond personal turmoil, *Your Favourite Toy* marks only the band’s second release since the sudden 2022 death of beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins, who was found unresponsive in his hotel room hours before a scheduled concert. His cause of death has never been officially confirmed, and the band is still navigating grief years later. After Hawkins’ passing, Mendel admitted he thought the band was finished, questioning if they could ever continue without Hawkins’ electric, one-of-a-kind presence. Today, the band has welcomed new drummer Ilan Rubin, but they still carry Hawkins’ legacy with them every day.
“But one thing that I’ve come to realise – this sounds a little hokey, but it’s true – is that Taylor is with us. His wife is on the road with us right now. We’re still very close to the Hawkins family. We talk about him every day,” Mendel said.
Grohl added that continuing as a band after losing Hawkins was far from easy. The band had been closer than brothers, and even small, routine moments felt strange in the aftermath of the loss. “When you go through any sort of trauma or loss, you have to do everything all over again. So the next day, that’s the first cup of coffee since it happened. Then it’s the first song we’ve written since it happened,” he said. “But whenever we go through something really difficult, we go through it together, with our families and our kids and our wives. We really rally. And if you’re surrounded by people that you know you can really rely on, that’s the key.”
The band got an early boost from fellow music legend Paul McCartney, who invited Grohl to join him on stage at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival – Grohl’s first public appearance since Hawkins’ death. Though Grohl almost missed the set after his flights were canceled, walking backstage just 20 minutes before showtime, the gesture meant the world to the band. Ahead of Foo Fighters’ 2025 summer show at Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium, Grohl clarified recent tabloid reports: he hasn’t formally asked McCartney to perform, only texted to let him know the band would be playing in McCartney’s hometown, to which McCartney replied with encouragement.
Even as the band retains its raw punk energy, age has brought small changes to their pre-show rituals. Where the band once knocked back tequila shots before hitting the stage, these days they fit in naps, and pass downtime in the dressing room building elaborate Lego sets. Grohl has built the Eiffel Tower, the White House, and multiple Harry Potter castles, calling the process surprisingly meditative: “You can just turn your brain off and follow the instructions. It’s like Ikea furniture. I’ve built a lot of Ikea furniture in my time and you feel so proud.” An hour before showtime, though, the energy picks up, cocktails start flowing, and the band steps on stage with genuine, unforced joy. “There’s no faking it in this band. You get on stage and you have those few hours to do it – and you’ve got to do it for real,” Grohl said.