In February 1997, the band—minus drummer William Goldsmith—relocated to Hollywood's Grandmaster Recorders, which Mendel said was "a small studio that sometimes moonlighted as a porn set, and looked the part." For a period of four weeks, the band re-recorded most of the album with Grohl playing the drum tracks. Grohl's drumming started with only "Monkey Wrench", as Grohl and Norton felt the drums on that song needed more work, but by the end of the sessions recordings of Goldsmith's drumming remained on only two tracks, "Doll" and "Up in Arms". According to Grohl, Goldsmith's drumming had good moments, but his performances mostly did not fit what Grohl had conceived for the drum track, so the frontman decided to redo them himself. Goldsmith even asked if he should go to Los Angeles, but Grohl declined and said he was only performing overdubs. Eventually, Mendel told Goldsmith the situation. Grohl said that he still wanted Goldsmith as a member of the band, despite replacing his tracks, but the disgruntled drummer decided to leave the Foo Fighters instead. Speaking in 2011 about the tension that surrounded the Goldsmith's departure, Grohl said, "There were a lot of reasons it didn't work out […] but there was also a part of me that was like, you know, I don't know if I'm finished playing the drums yet. […] I wish that I would have handled things differently."