Dave Grohl: 'Studio 666' was harder than Foo Fighters shows

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Foo Fighters band leader Dave Grohl said the horror movie Studio 666, in theaters Friday, was more of a challenge for him and the band than performing live in large arenas.

"Any time I'm in front of a camera, I feel a little uncomfortable," Grohl told UPI in a Zoom interview. "I never wanted to be a star."

Grohl, 53, and his bandmates play themselves, recording their 10th album in a haunted house. Grohl gets possessed by a satanic track, and many of his bandmates don't live to the closing credits.

Studio 666 is not Grohl's first acting job. He played himself in Bill & Ted Face the Music, "Animool" in The Muppets and Satan in Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny.

"It sounds weird, but I am totally comfortable on stage in front of 80,000 people in a stadium," Grohl said. "Staring into a lens, seeing my own reflection in a lens, that's a little weird to me."

Studio 666 did rank a tad below Foo Fighters music videos in difficulty, Grohl said. With Foo Fighters videos, Grohl said, he feels pressure to perform above and beyond the music.

"To try and just convey an emotion, you've got to kind of work it a little bit harder because there's a Foo Fighters song blaring over it," Grohl said. "Any sort of gesture is sort of exaggerated, almost like Charlie Chaplin would do in a silent film."

Grohl said the other five Foo Fighters members felt the same way. No one was fighting for more lines in Studio 666, he said.

"I'd have to say it's the opposite," Grohl said. "Like, can I please do less?"

Grohl said he rejected the idea when a Foo Fighters horror movie was first suggested. However, recording the album Medicine at Midnight in a house in Encino, Calif.,the idea grew on him.

The band finished the album, took a break and then filmed Studio 666 in the same house.

"It snowballed into a full-fledged feature film," Grohl said.

When he committed to making Studio 666, he knew it would have to be a horror comedy. Grohl looked at other rock band movies like KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park as inspiration.

"Back when I was a kid, those were exciting," Grohl said. "They were fun to watch because it was your favorite ensemble of people in an entirely different medium. And you get to see these other aspects of their personality."

By nature of taking artists out of their element, Grohl, said comedy naturally followed.

"It's just funny to see your favorite rock band try to act," he said. "We're not making The Exorcist here. It's a comedy slasher."

The premise of Studio 666 is that the band is struggling to write its 10th album. Grohl said that was pure fiction, as every album after 1997's The Colour and the Shape has been easy.

Grohl formed the Foo Fighters in 1994 after Nirvana disbanded when Kurt Cobain died by suicide. The former drummer played every instrument on the demos that became their first album.

Pat Smear and Nate Mandel joined the first lineup of Foo Fighters to tour with the 1995 album. Chris Shiflett, Taylor Hawkins and Rami Jaffee joined later and make up the current lineup, as well as the cast of Studio 666.

"The second album, we had to learn how to be a band," Grohl said. "Not just how to be a band, but how to be a band in a studio working to make a great record. That was difficult.

"The rest of them are [expletive] easy. Medicine at Midnight was honestly a breeze."

Grohl also composed the satanic song that corrupts his fictional self.

"I was sort of playing off of a lot of cliches," Grohl said. "It's got to have the opening riff. It's got to have the feedback. It has to have acoustic breakdown. It has to have thrash. It has to have the blast beat. It has to have the resolve."

Foo Fighters went back on tour with Medicine at Midnight in 2021. At their Los Angeles concert at The Forum, Grohl let 11-year-old Nandi Bushell play "Everlong" on stage with them.

Grohl said young musicians inspire him, because they inspire other young people to make music.

"Young musicians looking at old [expletive] like me, they're like, 'Yeah, whatever, some old guy with a guitar,'" Grohl said.

"When you see an 11-year-old killing it on a drum set, I guarantee you, there's another 11-year-old in the audience thinking, 'I could do that.' And they do."