No, seriously.

"We save a flight from disaster and we're everyone on the plane," says head Foo Fighter Dave Grohl of the video for the first single, "Learn To Fly," from There Is Nothing Left To Lose. "I have to play eight different characters. I had to get fitted for this prosthetic fat suit -- like have a cast made of my chest and neck and this shit. Then I had to get a cast made of my mouth because I'm also going to be a teenage girl with braces, which is a secret fantasy I've always had." For the last few months the other thing that Grohl has wanted probably even more than bent teeth has been a new Foo's guitarist. The winner is No Use For A Name slinger, Chris Shiflett, a figure in keeping - albeit a generation removed - with the punk lineage that the band enjoyed with former Germ Pat Smear in their ranks.

"He's wonderful," beams Grohl of Shiflett. "He's rocking our planet right now. We actually went though a grueling audition process, something that we had never done before. We let the word out that we needed a guitarist and got many, many, many responses and chose I think 40 people to send tapes out to. They came by and we played with every one of them. Some were great, some weren't, they were all very nice and all seemed very excited.

"We actually played with Chris early on in the process and thought, 'Wow! I hope everyone's like that!' And nobody was! So he wound up being in the band. The other day I said to him, 'So, how many guitars do you have?' And he said, 'Oh, one.' Woah! You might want to get a couple more because they're going to get thrashed onstage or you'll need another spare in case you break or drop out of tune." Grohl then took him guitar shopping in L.A.

The new album takes on board and assimilates a number of influences that the band soaked up while writing and recording. Rather than being cagey, Grohl is more than happy to act as tour guide. "One of our favorite, favorite, most favorite bands is a band from here in California called Queens of the Stone Age. They just made one of the most soulful, groove-orientated, heavy, hard rock albums you've ever heard," he explains. "It just felt like comfortable insanity and so we were listening to a lot of that. There was that heavy element. Then I'm a sucker for '70s solo recording artists. I really am. People like Andrew Gold who sang 'Lonely Boy' or Gerry Rafferty, who sang 'Baker Street' things like that. So, yeah, that had something to do with it too. That and a lot of death metal. So you can find your way in there somewhere."

Grohl's pop tastes have always been the line in the sand that's separated Nirvana's base from that of the Foo Fighters. But the notion that the shadow of Nirvana is now another age away from the backyard the Foos are currently plowing is not something Grohl will endorse.

"Well to me it's not because it was such an enormous part of my life. To a lot of people I think the music is still alive and important but things, you know, move on... You'll always miss it, you'll always have fond memories, you'll always have bad memories. But it feels nice to go from one place to the next in your life. I think with people's perception of the band, there will always be a hint of that in me. It's nothing I would ever deny; it's nothing that I would ever want to forget. I'm so very proud to have been in that band because regardless of anything outside of the three of us I was so satisfied that I could be involved in something that created such energy within three people. It's like the greatest love affair but with three people. And no sex."