FOO FIGHTERS Guitarist Calls Current Hiatus 'Strange' And 'Super Unusual'

According to The Pulse Of Radio, FOO FIGHTERS guitarist Chris Shiflett appeared on KROQ in Los Angeles on Monday morning (May 23),where he discussed the band's current hiatus. Shiflett said the band is enjoying the time off, explaining, "It's pretty great, man. We were working really hard for a long time. We were on the road for at least a year or so for the last [album], but then we were also traveling when we made the record, so that kind of felt like we were on the road, so it felt like a year and a half or so. Then before that there were shows we did for Dave's [Grohl, FOO FIGHTERS mainman] movie, then the album before that, so it seemed like it was just a long stretch of back-to-back stuff."

Shiflett added: "This is, like, nothing on the calendar; you're just kicking it for the summer. It's very strange, and super unusual for us; we don't tend to do that." The guitarist also said he felt "weird" for the first couple of months, revealing that it's often around January that he hears from Grohl about making the next record. Shiflett said: "Dave usually sends out an e-mail or a text or something: 'Hey, I've got some songs. Let's go.' But usually we don't have this amount of time off."

FOO FIGHTERS bassist Nate Mendel told The Pulse Of Radio a while back how the band's songwriting process works. "It's really been pretty consistent over the years," he said. "Dave writes the songs, and about half the time he'll do a demo on his own, and the other half of the time he'll come in and just play it on guitar. Then [he] shows it to the band and then we sit around and play it and figure out, you know, what kind of song is it gonna be. Is it a country song? Metal song? You know, what the dynamic is, arrangement, tempo, that kind of stuff. We help him finish it out."

Shiflett insisted that the band "shall return," but admitted, "I just don’t know when, but it will happen."

FOO FIGHTERS finished an intense, nearly three-year period of activity at the end of 2015, which included the release and promotion of the Grohl-directed "Sound City" documentary, the filming and recording of the "Sonic Highways" HBO series and album, and the year-long world tour in support of the latter — with Grohl nursing a broken leg for the second half of 2015.

The FOO FIGHTERS cut the fall European leg of the tour short after last November's terrorist attacks in France, but managed to issue an EP of five new songs, titled "Saint Cecilia", that was dedicated to the victims of the Paris attacks. Grohl revealed at the time that the FOO FIGHTERS would go on hiatus.