Grohl explained that he expects the new group to run alongside his work with Foo Fighters. He said: “You put the three of us together in a room something, is going to happen. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble making five, six, seven records if we want to. It’s just a matter of when and where and how.”

He added: “I wouldn’t want to stop doing it – it’s a fun band to be in.” Grohl, who plays drums in the band, revealed they have some unfinished material lying around from their first album sessions.

But the unit won’t be neglecting their other outfits, Grohl confirmed there will be a new Foo Fighters album “at some point – definitely”. He added: “It is tough because doing this is the greatest thing in the world and our other bands are awesome too. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out how to do them all. We’re here now and it’s a nice place to be.”

Thanks for the report to News BBC.

UG: When you first got together with Dave and Josh, did you feel the same sort of magic you felt when Zeppelin first jammed?

John Paul Jones: Yes, I did; I did. Umm, we kind of met at Dave’s birthday party at the Medieval Times thing [a concept restaurant where knights joust on horseback] which was pretty strange. It was like a blind date with Josh but he sat us together and watched us from the seats behind. And Josh was reasonably embarrassed about being there at all, I think. But it was fun and we went into the studio the next day and just started jamming. And yeah, it was quite immediate. We just realized, “Oh, actually there could be something here.” I could of expected that there would be; I couldn’t see how we could not happen. How we could not be great. Because I’ve always liked Queens of the Stone Age and always thought Josh was really interesting Dave, you know, Dave is just great anyway. So I couldn’t see how it could not be what it was.

When you first got together, did you bring in song ideas? Had you been stockpiling riffs and things?

Yeah, I had a couple. But once we got in the studio we just started working on stuff. It was like, “Well, what has anybody got? Got anything you wanna start working on?” Josh had a couple of choruses to start with and we just worked on those and then they changed into something else. Basically the machines were running all the time and we just put it all together; writing and recording pretty much at the same time. We’d work on a couple songs and overdubbing on others and it would just grow and we just sat back and listened and thinking, “Wow, this sounds really good.”

It was an organic process then. You didn’t have to push and pull and tug on each other to really find an identity for the band?

Very organic. I’ve not worked in that way before because normally I’m used to getting all the songs together and then going in and recording it all at once. This was literally it all happened in this one room; Josh’s studio. Amazing. “Once we got in the studio we just started working on stuff.”

You produced the album yourselves and didn’t bring in anyone from the outside. Did you feel that no one knew better than the band themselves what direction you wanted to head in?

Yeah; you’d have to explain it to somebody else probably. But, uh, there are three produces and we all knew what we were doing and we could all produce each other. If anybody was doing overdubs or putting vocals on then the other people could be sitting in the control box and doing what a producer would do.

You talk about the sessions having an organic feel but how were they organized? Was it you and Dave recording rhythm tracks and then having the guitars as overdubs?

It was generally live. We liked to get all the tracks down and then the overdubbing would come later. But the whole point was to get live tracks down; get the feel and get the groove. Very similar to the way we used to do it in Zeppelin actually.

Certainly Dave was a huge fan of Bonzo.

Right.

Did it feel at all like laying down tracks with John Bonham back in Zeppelin?

It was very similar. Both Bonzo and Dave are groove merchants; they both like a good groove. I like to play with a good drummer that listens and can groove and has got that sense of swing. But also both drummers were interested in – without necessarily discussing it ahead of time or talking about it in words but just by playing and listening – making a groove really work. Making a drum part really work and the more you play it, the more you kind of fine tune the part between the drums and the bass. So they work together. And that’s what makes a really good rhythm section. That’s one of the things that made Zeppelin different to a lot of other bands; we worked really closely. And that’s what I’m doing with Dave in this band. I listen to what he does. And in the live shows, we’re beginning to fill in the same places; the same phrases in the same sort of place just through improvisation basically. You play something and then you come to the same conclusion at the end of it and that’s happening more and more and that’s really gratifying.

You talk about the approach to rhythm as being similar to what you did in Zeppelin but certainly your bass sound is much different. It’s more aggressive and bigger and has more distortion.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I just felt it needed a different sound to go with the way Josh was playing and the tones he was getting. And he would suggest [sounds]; he has all these old amps, a whole studio full of strange amps, and we were looking for tones on a couple things like “Scumbag” or something. And he’s, “Well try this thing” and he’d bring out this old Guild amp and I’d use it as well as my regular bass amps. And then combine the tones at the end. And I’d say, “Well actually that’s pretty different but it really works.” It goes together much better with his guitar tones and stuff like that. And so I was really in a position to try out all different tones to get something that worked better with what we were doing.

On the videos, it looks like you were using a pick?

I used a pick a lot more; I did a lot of things with downstrokes and picks which I used to do a little bit with Zeppelin but not that much. And it’s just a continuation, I suppose, of what I’ve always done. I’ve always wanted to do different things; not just get stuck in a groove. Always get stuck in a groove and not get stuck in a rut!

Was it different for you as a bass player playing with two guitars?

There are a lot of guitars swirling around with slide parts and stuff. I played some of those slide parts myself. So …

Did you really?

Yeah; because I play steel guitar. Quite a lot of the slide guitar was me.

I didn’t have a copy of the album only various downloads so I didn’t have the credits at all. I’m sorry about that.

No, no problem. I don’t think I’m credited; it doesn’t say. I play all sorts of things: four-string, 10-string, 12-string bass; all the regular bass mandolins on the record; regular mandolins. All sorts of things. And steel guitar.

So what is happening musically on “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I,” the first song on the album?

I’m playing bass and steel guitar on that one; I did the steel guitar first and then dubbed the bass on afterwards.

That’s such a strange way to record. All of this happened in the studio?

Yeah, everything was worked on in the studio; everything you hear on that record was worked up in the studio. I think Josh had the beginnings of that riff but then it got changed about a lot and it ended up as it was. The first single, “New Fang,” has a kind of crazy shuffle feel to it. Umm, it has got a slight shuffley feel about it. It’s a very straight-ahead rock thing; I think I just played straight ahead bass on that one.

Is there anything else on that?

They were Josh’s chords as well as the first one. He would start off quite a few of the songs but then they’d all go different places. We’d all write different parts and sometimes it would change it a bit and sometimes it would change it a lot. “Elephants” has a lot of changes in it. There’s an amazing intro … Yeah. And then it goes into this completely different feel for the verse. Yeah; that’s all bass mandolin as well on my part. I don’t play bass on that at all. Yeah, again, I think the main body of the song came first and then I can’t remember who came up with the riff. There’s different riffs by different people [laughs.] They’d be working on something else and then they’d go, “Actually that would be great to start this or to end it.” And so it was a bit of picking and choosing from different things and just trying things out. “I like to play with a good drummer that listens and can groove and has got that sense of swing.”

“Bandoliers” has a strange kind of Spanish/Moorish feel to it and sports some keyboards as well.

Yeah; there’s a bit of Mellotrony stuff in the middle. I must admit I grew to hate the Mellotron mainly because I had to use it on stage with Zeppelin and they don’t like being traveled around. But then I thought, “You know, actually I’ve got some Mellotron samples” and I thought, “You know, that would sound great in this.” I grew to love the sound again and I did the same in “Caligulove” with the sound of the Vox Continental organ. I had a Vox Continental in the studio and I thought again, “This is an instrument I always used to hate in the ‘60s.” I was a Hammond man but I thought, “Do you know? I want to make this sound good because it will be different. To use a Hammond organ would be just, ‘Oh, everybody would expect that from me.’” So I just liked the tone and it just kind of fitted the mood. Again it’s all experimental in the studio; you try this, you try that. And, “Oh, OK, this sounds good or that’s not so good. Let’s try something else.”

You touch on a really interesting point. You mentioned the Mellotron samples which is a throwback to a lot of your keyboard sounds from back in the Zeppelin days. So the band has this sort of classic sound about it and yet the sound of the guitars and the arrangements and vocal melodies are really forward looking. You can hear a lot of Zeppelin in the music. In other words, you didn’t consciously try and tiptoe around your past. Does that make sense?

Yes. Well, you know, there’s no point throwing the baby out with the bathwater, is there? All these things are in my past and if they’re good, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use them in a – hopefully – new and fresh way. And if they fit the song which they certainly did, I thought, then there’s no reason why I shouldn’t use them. And you don’t hear those sounds that much anymore and so they’re kind of fresh again.

Would it ever get as specific as Josh or Dave referencing the sound on a Zeppelin song?

No references anywhere for any band for anything. And I think that helps rather than anything else. Because you can address the song in the present; you don’t have to think back at all.

“Reptiles” had a big distorted bass sound and had a really cool bass line with a lot of holes.

Yeah. Again what to do. Josh had a demo of that which sounds completely different. He had all these weird sort of acoustic guitary things going all over the place. And I remember Dave listening to it and going, “What on earth is that?” It’s very odd. Then we tried to do something with it and it turned into what you hear. It was almost our interpretation of what Josh’s idea was. And then it becomes Vultures music.

And the Vultures music album ends with “Spinning in Daffodils” with you on piano.

Yeah and 12-string bass which is tuned really, really weirdly. Every instrument I play has got a different tuning which kind of helps in a way because you can’t get comfortable with it. Your fingers just don’t go to the same normal places. Don’t go to the same places. You end up just coming up with different stuff which is always challenging at first.

It’s a great mood isn’t it, “Daffodils”? In fact the entire record has a very kind of dark mood about it.

It is; we like dark. What were some of the basses you played?

They’re all made by Hugh Manson; Manson guitars. Uhh, yeah the four-string bass is normal but it’s a Manson; 10-string bass on “Gunman” which is like a five-string bass with double strings, octave strings like a 12-string guitar type of idea. From low E to high C. The bass on “Daffodils” is a 12-string from low B to high C; a bass mandolin on “Elephants” which is tuned in fifths like a mandolin – G to E again with sort of 12-string type octave strings. The 10- and 12-string basses are in stereo so the neck pickup goes to the bass rig and the bridge pickup goes to a Bad Cat guitar rig. So it gives a very wide sound. What else am I using? I use a Yamaha bass; one of Josh’s many obscure Japanese guitars that he has.

What was your basic amp rig?

SWR 900 series. Great amps with a 4×10 [cabinet] and a 15; similar to my stage setup.

You’ve been recording your bass for such a long time; did you have an idea of what type of sound you wanted?

Nope; it depended on the song. It depended entirely on the song. Sometimes I used distortion, I used pedals; sometimes I used an old Guild amp that Josh had for distortion on a couple of tracks. I’d never used distortion before or not with Zeppelin; I think I used it on my solo albums a bit. I used a pick quite a lot which I didn’t use before. So I tried to do things differently to suit the music. The music comes first and then you figure out how best you can realize it later.

The bass playing on the album sounds very intricate – there are time changes and a bunch of different rhythmic things going on. Are you a better bass player today than you were back in the Zeppelin days?

I’m certainly different, yeah. I’m playing as well as I ever have; probably better in some respects. I’m actually practicing even sometimes which I never did before [laughs.] No, I’m enjoying playing bass again actually; I really am. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing at the moment.”

The response to the record has been huge. How does that feel? Did you expect that?

Oh, yeah, especially when we listened to it back. We probably didn’t realize when we were doing it what we were doing but when we started listening to it back, when we got a few tracks and then you put it on, you think, “Wow, actually this really is something; it’s exciting.” Again people and another of the many parallels between this band and Zeppelin is people either really get it or they really don’t. And it’s kind of not much in between which is nice. It’s not much of, “Oh, that’s alright.” Nobody says that. They say, “It’s this or that and we don’t like it.” Those reviews always refer to every other band; it’s very peculiar. And then quite a lot of the reviews, the majority thank goodness, they really get it. They say, “It’s vital; it’s dark; it’s exciting; it’s many-layered; it’s complex. But it groove and it’s fresh.” And that’s what I think of it.

What does it feel like being in your first fulltime band in three decades?

There were one-off projects before this and various solo projects but you’ve never really been a member of a working band since Zeppelin. Well, I feel lucky to still be able to do it. Umm, it’s great music with great people. We travel on a bus; we do shows; people like the shows; it’s really nice. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing at the moment. Put out good records that people like and yeah, I’m very happy.

The live shows feel great?

Oh, the live shows are amazing, yeah; every show gets better. It’s really good. I was saying to somebody else that doing some of the European festivals, I looked down and I noticed that the first 10 rows looked exactly like they did in 1969! All the same hair and the same t-shirts. It’s great.

You still have the fire?

Oh, yeah, very much. And I’m more dedicated in a way; if I can’t get something I’ll work at it until I can rather than doing something else which I used to do. The album really gives the band a lot of freedom in what you could do on a followup album. There are so many different styles here. Well, maybe there will be another record and we’ll go through a few more directions.

Interview by Steven Rosen Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2009

Read the original article here: http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/interviews/interviews/john_paul_jones_i_couldnt_see_how_we_could_not_happen.html

Grohl, who was answering Time readers’ questions, says that his favorite Foo Fighters song is “Aurora” from their 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose. “I love that song because of what it represents to me. It was the first time Taylor [Hawkins] and Nate [Mendel] and I really connected in the songwriting process,” he says. “Whenever we play that song live — it doesn’t matter if we’re playing a club to 500 people or a stadium with 90 000 people — when I begin the intro, people go ape shit.” A couple of the readers’ questions focused on Grohl’s family and how having two daughters has changed his career. “The band is not the most important thing in my life,” he says. “My kids are.” On the same token, he says parenthood is terrifying. “I’ve got two daughters that are gonna grow up with a rock musician as a father, here in Los Angeles,” he says. “Two beautiful girls in the Valley. I’m fucked, man. I’m shit out of luck. I don’t know what to do. I gotta move.” Thanks for the report to Rolling Stone.com.

Them Crooked Vultures

With upcoming our dates in the UK, the three-piece stated they are already thinking about their follow-up.

“I felt we’ve only just started to pick up steam,” said singer Josh Homme. “Why would we want to stop now?”

Drummer Dave Grohl also commented on the band’s sound saying “when we make our second record, it’s going to be even more powerful than this one.”

Since many critics and fans see the band as a supergroup, Homme made it known that he wasn’t too fond of being labeled.

“It’s not that I hate that term,” he said. “I just don’t shave with it, I don’t eat with it and it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Read the full story at: http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/upcoming_releases/them_crooked_vultures_already_working_on_another_record.html

Ladies and gentlemen, Them Crooked Vultures — the second-best band John Paul Jones has ever been in! The Led Zeppelin guys never made much of a splash in the supergroup scene, unless you’re the kind of die-hard fan who still busts out those old records by the Honeydrippers or the Firm. But when John Paul Jones got the hard-rock supersession itch, he didn’t mess around. For Them Crooked Vultures, he hooks up with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), two of Zep’s smartest disciples. If these three 800-pound gorillas want to bash out an album as willfully weird and slapdash as Them Crooked Vultures, who can tell them not to? And if they do a song called “Elephants” where they basically crunch every riff on Led Zeppelin II into seven dizzy minutes, why not?

On Them Crooked Vultures, the three rock stars don’t exactly visit the depths of Mordor. The album sticks to the sort of low-end guitar boogie that Homme and Grohl were blasting in their Camaros when they bummed their first cigarettes. The first thing you hear is Grohl’s instantly recognizable drums whomping out “Nobody Loves Me & Neither Do I,” as Homme plays desert-rat guitar and Jones adds a bass line as nasty as “Out on the Tiles.” Homme takes almost all the lead vocals, but he doesn’t try to define or dominate the songs, mostly doing lyric goofs like “Slick back my hair/You know the devil’s in there.”

Sometimes the music sounds exactly like Zeppelin, as on “Reptiles,” a sly update of “South Bound Suarez.” Other times it sounds like Queens of the Stone Age with a hot new bassist. But it’s not desperately ambitious — the album sounds like the good-natured quickie it probably was. Jones plays a few keyboard solos in “Mind Eraser, No Chaser” and “Scumbag Blues,” and though Homme doesn’t sing like Robert Plant (his upper register sounds more like Cream’s Jack Bruce), he does deliver loads of Jimmy Page doppelgänger solos, just to prove he can.

Despite the fact that Jones has spent most of the past three decades doing ornate orchestral arrangements (most smashingly on R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People), he doesn’t get fancy here. He puts all his mojo into forward motion, reminding you he’s the bass man who helped give the world “Black Dog.” But the stylistic asides here add a bit of flavor. The superbly titled “Interlude With Ludes” is a psychedelic ditty with a circus-style loop, as Homme muses, “On the good ship Lollygag/LSD and a bloody pile of rags/I hate to be the bearer of bad news/But I am.” “Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up” is a daffy eight-minute Doors tribute. And “Caligulove” is, well, a song called “Caligulove.”

Homme and Grohl are old hands at this kind of thing — see their excellent Zeppelin homages on the Queens’ Songs for the Deaf. But they definitely seem inspired by Jonesy’s presence, and he helps them keep it light. Homme and Grohl pound away like fanboys touched with the spirit, as if jamming with one of their heroes brought out their wanton side. That’s what makes Them Crooked Vultures fun: It’s fan fiction with a classic-rock heart.

Album got the rating of 3.5/5

John Paul Jones, Josh Homme and Dave Grohl

Read the original text at: http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/30802649/review/30805558/them_crooked_vultures

Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters

How did this unholy quartet of titans come to be? “I have a family friend who was getting a star on the Walk of Fame, Dave Koz, so I went out to show Dave some love,” he says. The best part is Grohl got some approval from at least one of the acts. “I f—ing had Barry Manilow tell me he was a fan about two weeks ago. That was a ‘what the f—?’ moment,” he adds.

In 15 years of rocking, the Foo Fighters have had quite a few of these “WTF” moments. So what are their favorites?
“Recording at Brian May’s house, that was a big one,” Grohl says.

“I remember when my dad called me — he’s like a hundred years old — and said my name related to the Foo Fighters was a clue in the New York Times’ crossword puzzle,” bassist Nate Mendel recalls. “That’s kind of a WTF moment.”

Befitting their deserved status as the nicest band in rock, some of the Foos proudest moments involve their parents. In addition to Mendel’s dad seeing his son in the NYT crossword puzzle, Grohl recently got a proud call from mom.

“My mom went back to Virginia recently and she’s got this old blanket chest that’s filled with Rolling Stone, Musician and Billboard magazines ever since like ‘Nevermind’ came out,” Grohl says. “She was back there by herself recently going through all of these magazines and she said, ‘The one thing that I thought in looking at all of those old Rolling Stone, Spin and Melody Maker [magazines] is I remember each one of those bands that were the biggest band in the world that year.’ We played festivals with most of these bands that were the most enormous bands in the world and have since disappeared. And the fact that we’re still hanging out 15 years later makes me pretty proud. I guess my mother felt proud as well. That’s ‘what the f—’ like, really, we’re the ones that f—ing weathered that bulls—?”

The Foo Fighters’ ‘Greatest Hits’ is available now.

read the original text at:  http://www.spinner.com/2009/11/09/the-foo-fighters-reveal-their-proudest-moments/

Them Crooked Vultures Tracklist:

1. Nobody Loves Me and Neither Do I
2. Mind Eraser, No Chaser
3. New Fang
4. Dead End Friends
5. Elephants
6. Scumbag Blues
7. Bandoliers
8. Reptiles
9. Interlude with Lude
10. Warsaw, Or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up
11. Caligulove
12. Gunman
13. Spinning in Daffodils

Them Crooked Vultures album cover

Read original text at:http://blog.wbru.com/2009/11/10/them-crooked-vultures-stream-new-album/