Seeing as the Foo Fighters' Wasting Light was officially released today (April 12), fans of the group are no doubt taking a piece of band history home with them today. They may be surprised to learn how much memorabilia they've got though. On top of the recording, copies of the album have been packaged with actual chunks of the original analog master tape, which the band promptly destroyed after completing the record.
Lead Foo Dave Grohl confirmed that, after backing up the sessions digitally, the group took some scissors to the 20 to 30 reels of music from the sessions and decided to stuff copies of the album with the mementos. So, yes, that means they made the album old-school, straight to tape, as opposed to recording everything straight into a computer.
"At the end of the session I thought it would be an extraordinary move to destroy all the masters and give the pieces of the tapes to the fans," Grohl told LA Weekly. "I thought, 'let's chop it up into a million pieces, and give it to the people who buy the album so they can hold it in their hands and see it.' A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand; it's all ones and zeroes, this digital cloud floating in the ether. But with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand."
Specially marked copies of the album feature a one- to two-inch piece of tape, but before you get any crazy ideas about collecting a handful of these things and taping them together, consider that each strip contains merely a snippet of Wasting Light.
"They'd probably get one note, or one drumbeat," Grohl explains. "I mean, the pieces of tape are like an inch by an inch piece of tape. We chop it up into a million fucking pieces... if a million people got together and put it back together, they'd get a whole album."
Lead Foo Dave Grohl confirmed that, after backing up the sessions digitally, the group took some scissors to the 20 to 30 reels of music from the sessions and decided to stuff copies of the album with the mementos. So, yes, that means they made the album old-school, straight to tape, as opposed to recording everything straight into a computer.
"At the end of the session I thought it would be an extraordinary move to destroy all the masters and give the pieces of the tapes to the fans," Grohl told LA Weekly. "I thought, 'let's chop it up into a million pieces, and give it to the people who buy the album so they can hold it in their hands and see it.' A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand; it's all ones and zeroes, this digital cloud floating in the ether. But with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand."
Specially marked copies of the album feature a one- to two-inch piece of tape, but before you get any crazy ideas about collecting a handful of these things and taping them together, consider that each strip contains merely a snippet of Wasting Light.
"They'd probably get one note, or one drumbeat," Grohl explains. "I mean, the pieces of tape are like an inch by an inch piece of tape. We chop it up into a million fucking pieces... if a million people got together and put it back together, they'd get a whole album."
