2002’s One By One has gone one to be one of Foo Fighters’ most classic albums. It turns out, though, that they didn’t get the producer they intended for it because Dave Grohl accidentally called “the wrong Nick.”
The band spoke about this with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and Taylor Hawkins said, “Dave came to my house, we did a couple demos. We did one that was ‘Times Like These,’ and we were like, ‘Well that’s a great song.’ And then we said, ‘OK, well we have a week at Dave’s house in Virginia.’ Dave accidentally called the wrong Nick and Nick Raskulinecz showed up.”
An amazed Lowe interjected, “Wait, he wasn’t supposed to be the Nick?” Grohl responded, “I meant to call Nick Oliveri, who’s the bass player of Queens On The Stone Age, and my friend Nick Raskulinecz answered. I knew him from Sound City, he’s a great engineer, he had worked at that studio for years.”
Lowe then asked, “Are you thinking, ‘I’m going to style this out?’ Rather than admit I’m looking for a different Nick, did you just say, ‘Called the wrong Nick, do you want to come make a record with us’?” Through uproarious laughter, Hawkins answered, “That’s exactly what happened!”
That album was one of Raskulinecz’s first major producing projects and as Grohl and Hawkins noted, he has gone on to become an in-demand rock producer who has worked with artists like Rush, Deftones, The Hold Steady, Mastodon, Alice In Chains, and many others.
Watch the full interview above.