Didn’t this happen before?

The Foo Fighters and Soundgarden to some extent are the grown up version of a Grunge band who stayed clean living and true to their non-mainstream, non-populous roots. They are what Nirvana, AIC, STP, and PJ would be had the members of these bands set out to intentionally be great mainstream rock acts who didn’t want any attention whatsoever, and agressively defended against the media and fans’ prying eyes, and succeeded.

The difference is that the Foo Fighters actually WERE underground, unpopular artists for the first decade and a half of their career, thus making the building of such a post-grunge legendary band with indie credibility such a smooth easy process. No one OD’d (one came close), and the lineup stayed relatively stable because they weren’t the MTV sweethearts. “grunge” was over, and kids weren’t crazy for the new sound of the Foos. All the better for these guys. They now have what the grunge bands of the 90s set out to get in the first place, recognition without celebrity. Though they sound different musically, the Foos are basicly what grunge would have looked like if the personal lives of the artists involved never hit the fan from lack of privacy and the weight of being role models. They’re like fosils, or living artifacts, tangible history.