With Kurt Cobain’s death on April 5, 1994, not only were millions of fans around the world shocked and devastated – the musician’s bandmates were also hit hard, because Nirvana’s almost surreal career suddenly came to a tragic end. However, after a few months in which he couldn’t make music after the terrible loss, drummer Dave Grohl took courage – as a form of self-therapy, so to speak, he wrote his own songs and secretly recorded them alone. This resulted in a cassette with several tracks that would become the beginning of the Foo Fighters. But how did Grohl come up with the strange-sounding band name?
Dave Grohl’s connection to UFOs
Grohl once explained what the name is all about in an interview:
“At the time I recorded the first demo for the Foo Fighters, which later became the first album, I was reading a lot of books about UFOs. Not only because it’s a fascinating subject, these UFO books are also a real treasure trove when it comes to band names. The thing is, I recorded the first record all by myself, I played all the instruments. But I wanted people to think that it was from a band and I thought that with FOO FIGHTERS everyone would think that there were more members and not just one guy. Stupid, right?”
This is what the term “Foo Fighter” means
Allied aircrews used the word “Foo Fighter” during World War II to describe unusual lighting phenomena that could not be explained. Some of them were described in official records of the time as bright, fist- to basketball-sized objects, sometimes with a metallic sheen, that were observed both during the day and at night.
To this day it is still questionable what that was all about. For example, so-called sprites or ball lightning are often mentioned. Other theories assume that it was electromagnetic phenomena or reflections caused by ice crystals.