it’s a Sunday night and I am bored so I want to share some of my Foo headcanons. These aren’t the shippy variety, just the “band doesn’t tell us much so I filled in some blanks” variety, one of my favorites is that I would like to believe that Taylor went to bat for Chris in his early days in the band .
So one of the most fascinating bits of drama in the band history for me is that Chris basically knew it was a possibility since he joined that Pat could come back at a time when he would have replaced Chris rather than what eventually happened, which was just Pat coming on as a third guitarist.
Chris talks about this in Back and Forth (and according to reviews by people who saw the first, longer, cut of the film, it seems there was originally more about this that didn’t even make the deleted scenes. You can see a bit in the first Back and Forth trailer at about 27 seconds “why do we have to get someone who used to have my job?” )
ANYway in the version of the film we had, he talks about finding this out at some point and his phrasing is interesting. “Dave didn’t know I knew that, I guess most of them didn’t”. “Most” of them implies at least one did. So either someone told Chris, or Chris found out and confided in either Nate or Taylor. Nate was my first instinct, (and it certainly could have been both) but as I thought about it, I liked the idea of it being Taylor. For a few reasons.
Tay gets credited with being the “musical director” of the band. The one who cared the most about them being good and arranging “sectional” rehearsals with just himself, Chris and Nate. This was even reiterated in very recent interviews from 2026. I think he would have recognized and appreciated the chemistry they were building.
Taylor was in the band with Pat for the shortest time at that point, and, in fact has told the story several times that Pat up and quit the first day he walked into rehearsal lol. He might have been more objective about it. He also knew what it was like to come in as the new guy and might have been sympathetic
He might have been one of the few people at that point who could influence and push back on Dave. I can’t help thinking that if Dave had his mind made up on a decision, he goes through with it, what could have changed his mind?
Chris told a story a few times about how early on, Taylor sat him down and had a conversation with him where he told him to “make himself indispensable” in the band, I think that ties in neatly in this scenario.
I like to think Taylor advocated for Shifty early on, it makes sense with his personality, and also from a practical “we want to be the best we can be” perspective.
There’s also a few other things, like the interview from Big Day Out in 2000 where Taylor gives Chris a big hug right when Dave was talking about having a ton of fun playing with Pat again at a one-off show. And like later on the only time Chris really got to show off in Foo shows for a long time was during “Cold Day In The Sun” when Taylor had the reins. I think he was a little bit more in tune with what his bandmates were doing during a show than Dave was.
Another thing is Chris talks about a time when he was kind of bored and disillusioned with music, guitar playing and maybe life in general (seems like right around the time he got sober, as that rarely happens for no reason) and one of the things that made him love music again was playing with Chevy Metal and just having fun. And like if you watch those videos, it doesn’t get talked about much but their playing in CM was tight as fuck. In another interview, when Chris was asked in an interview what he had in his monitor for Foos he said that it was really only Dave’s vocal and Taylor’s drums (particularly the snare and kick) it also tracks with what he said in a few interviews about feeling totally lost even in songs he played a million times without Taylor :(
This is probably long enough but one more thing about this bit of history that I find fascinating is that it seems like Pat coming back kind of broke Chris and Dave’s relationship for awhile after that. They seemed a lot closer up until that point and really distant for a long time after that, which is kind of a bummer. It seems like (again, according to some interviews around Back and Forth) Dave, being the somewhat conflict-adverse person we know and love, didn’t actually take the time to say to Chris (who was newly married and had one and maybe two tiny kids at that point ) “hey this is what’s happening, but don’t worry you’re not about to lose your job” which it seems like that’s all Chris would have needed to be ok with it. It kind of seems like it was a moment he realized they would only ever be work friends and kind of pulled back (though I think this has changed a bit in the long years since)
The other thing I love is that is is basically between Dave and Chris, since Pat and Chris seem like biological father and son at this point lol
Anyway, I have more of these, maybe I will post them at some point if anyone cares.
stormborns
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
areudirty
