In a new interview with Premier Guitar, Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett recently revealed that during his second-ever live performance with the band, he almost found himself in serious trouble.
“I remember that was my first massive Foo Fighters blunder,” Shiflett recalled. “It was my second show at the sound check. I’d never had a guitar tuned to a low A on the E string, and I think I tuned it to A sharp. And then [I] played the whole song that way.”
What he did almost cost his career with the band. “I remember at the end of it I realized, and Dave [Grohl] said, ‘Hey, come here… Don’t do that again. Maybe don’t do that ever again,'” he added.
Even with that early mistake, Shiflett has been with Foo Fighters for so long.
Although Shiflett nailed the audition, Grohl quickly realized that his new bandmate would need more than just his single Gibson Les Paul for the new role. In the same interview, Shiflett also recalled Grohl taking him to shop for two new guitars.
“When I joined the band you said, ‘Oh, you’re gonna need more than one guitar,’” said Shiflett, speaking to his bandmate. “And you took me shopping. This might be day two of being in the Foo Fighters, talk about a dream come true… So, we drive over before rehearsal to Voltage, these shops that I had been going to since I was a little kid, being yelled at, ‘Don’t touch that!’ And now I walk in there and I’ve got Dave Grohl with me, with his American Express, like, ‘We’re going shopping, get whatever you want.'”
Shiflett didn’t specify what he bought, but early footage from his Foo Fighters days suggests that one of the guitars may have been a Gibson Explorer in Classic White.
