Not wanting to live off Nirvana's legacy, he came up with the moniker to avoid using his own name. But if he could go back in time, he'd change it. Grohl tells CBS 60 Minutes:

"I called it Foo Fighters because I didn't want to put my name on it at first. Had I imagined that it would last more than a month and a half I might have named it something else. It's the dumbest band name ever. Foo Fighters is a slang term that they used for UFOs in World War II."

The frontman discusses the process followed while making the upcoming eighth Foos album Sonic Highways, which is accompanied by a documentary series which is begin screened by the BBC.