FINding thE FOo In 1989, Shiflett moved to Hollywood with Lost Kittenz bandmate Luke Tierney, intent on taking their band to the big time. That didn’t happen, so Shiflett moved to San Francisco with Joey Cape, another Santa Barbara native who was the frontman for the popular punk band Lagwagon. Cape got Shiflett an office job with Lagwagon’s label, Fat Wreck Chords, which was owned by Fat Mike of NOFX. Soon after, another band on their roster, No Use for a Name, needed a guitarist, and Shiflett was in, learning 25 songs in three days. He played with No Use for almost five years at the peak of the 1990s punk-rock movement. He also joined Cape and Fat Mike as part of Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a punk-rock supergroup cover band. “I can’t credit Mike and Joey enough for how much I learned about the process of making records by observing them in the studio,” he said. But Shiflett was approaching his late twenties, and the punkrock life was grueling. “I had a great run, but I could feel the air running out,” he explained. By 1999, Shiflett was signing up for junior college classes that didn’t involve music, figuring he needed a new career path. Meanwhile, his friend Bill Armstrong was working in the music business in Los Angeles and heard that Guns N’ Roses needed a guitarist. Shiflett declined the audition, but he mentioned to Armstrong that the Foo Fighters might be looking for a new guitarist as well. Armstrong agreed to reach out, but nothing came of it until a few months later. That’s when the Foo Fighters’ tour manager, Gus Brandt, reached out. “I met Chris on the very first Warped Tour in 1995,” said Brandt. “I remembered that he was nice and good at his craft. When I was asked to handle the auditions, he stuck out as someone who might fit into the Foo Fighter ecosystem. I slid his name into the mix.” Shiflett was hanging with friends in New York when he got the call from Brandt, and he immediately took a flight back to California. “I didn’t know what to expect, so I sat there in my bedroom and played along with the songs and learned them as best I could,” he said. “I had been a fan, their records frequently played in No Use’s tour van, and I saw them live a few times, including their 1996 show at the S.B. Bowl.” He drove down to L.A. for the audition on day two of a week’s worth of auditions. Arriving early, he could hear someone else in the studio, followed by what felt like an eternal silence. “I’m just psyching myself out, going, ‘Oh, fuck! They’re in there just vibing with whoever must’ve totally killed it.’ ” But when he walked in for his audition, Grohl’s first words were, “Oh my god, Chris, you saved us! That guy wouldn’t leave.” In addition to memorizing the four songs that he’d been sent, Shiflett learned the first two Foo Fighter records, including the backing vocals. They were impressed that he was the first one to sing during the audition. As they chatted, Grohl realized that he’d met Shiflett many years earlier at a punk show inside a Chinese restaurant on State Street in Santa Barbara. Grohl was playing with Scream, his band before Nirvana, and Shiflett was playing bass for the Santa Barbara punk band Rat Pack. “Dave has never confirmed this, but I think that random show we played together on State Street in the late ’80s was what distinguished me and sealed the deal,” said Shiflett. “We all come from similar socio-economic backgrounds, and most of us spent some time in punk bands, so it’s just kind of central to the character
‘ChRIS IS, wiTHOuT A douBT, THE moSt ACcompliSHEd muSiciAN IN THE band.’ —Dave Grohl
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