Today marks twelve years since Foo Fighters’ fifth record In Your Honor, the expansive double album that showcases both electric and acoustic collections with the album totaling 20 songs. 

The album marked a few firsts for the band, as In Your Honor would become the first of their albums to not win Best Rock Album at the Grammys since 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose. It’s also the first album they opened up to a whole host of guests including John Paul Jones, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, future bandmate Rami Jaffe and many more. 

One of those guests that Dave Grohl wanted on the album was Warren Haynes. As he says in a 2005 interview with Guitar World, the goal was to have guests on every song for the acoustic portion (Norah Jones, John Paul Jones and others ended up on it). 

“I took pride in the fact that the four of us made our records and that was that,” Grohl said of foraying into the “cameo-appearance thing” for the first time. “I came up with a list of people I would like to have play on it. Eventually it strayed off into Make-A-Wish foundation territory. It went from people that I know, like Josh Homme, to people that I would give my left arm to be in the same room with, like Mike Campbell from Tom Petty’s band, Ry Cooder and Warren Haynes.”

Grohl admits that the band finished up the acoustic album so quickly that they never got a chance to really go through the list in earnest. Although they did manage to recruit the Led Zeppelin bassist to join them. “When he showed up at the studio, we all tried to play it cool. I didn’t want to tackle the guy and kiss his face off, but it was hard to keep from asking him questions about John Bonham.” 

Haynes and Grohl connected before that, as we’ve told you before, as the guitarist’s mother hitched a ride with Haynes across the country following the attacks of September 11. Shortly after, Gov’t Mule welcomed Dave Grohl on stage for “Rockin’ in the Free World.”