The recording of the Foo Fighters’ second album The Colour And The Shape nearly saw the end of the band – with frontman Dave Grohl scrapping a whole album’s worth of material and disagreements causing their drummer to quit.
But an inspired late-night solo songwriting session produced a moment of genius that pushed the band to create their greatest album.
The song that saved Grohl’s masterpiece from imploding was Everlong.
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It was Grohl alone who created the first, self-titled Foo Fighters album in 1995 in the aftermath of former Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain’s death.
After a hugely positive reaction to that debut, the Foo Fighters – at this time comprising of Grohl, ex-Nirvana/Germs guitarist Pat Smear and ex-Sunny Day Real Estate rhythm section Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith – sought to record a bigger, bolder follow-up as a full-band.
Desiring a less DIY, more mainstream rock sound, the band enlisted producer Gil Norton – famed for his work on the Pixies’ Doolittle – to oversee the recording of their second album in late 1996. But after setting up camp in Bear Creek Studios in Washington state, the resulting sessions were far from enjoyable for the group, all of whom were relatively inexperienced in a professional studio.
In his autobiography The Storyteller, Grohl wrote: “Gil was a notorious taskmaster, and his meticulous attention to detail ultimately paid off, but not before breaking our spirit after 30 or 40 takes of each song.”
Whilst the band were mentally strained from being overworked, tensions were further raised for Grohl after he was served with divorce papers at the studio from his wife Jennifer Youngblood. After a month of stress, things came to a head when Grohl and Norton became dissatisfied with Goldsmith’s drumming.
“Gil called Nate and I the rhythmless section, so that was encouraging,” Goldsmith recalled in Foos documentary Back and Forth. “Constantly, there was this feeling that, whatever song we were working on, Dave had a drum part for it already in his head.”
Frustrated, Goldsmith felt that his contributions could never live up to Grohl’s impossible standards.
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In the same film, Grohl claims: “When I’ve written a song, I have kind of a clear idea of where the basic root accents should lie… which is a fancy way of saying I know what the drums should sound like in my head as I’m [playing guitar]. If I listen to a song, and I don’t think it has the thing that it needs, it’s not necessarily gonna get past me and get on an album.”
In need of a break, the band took the Christmas period off, and a jaded Grohl, homeless after splitting from Youngblood, returned to his home state of Virginia to his mother’s house.
Listening back to their work so far, Grohl was disappointed that the group could not reach his high expectations. He recalls: “I [had] a conversation with Pat, saying, ‘It has to be better than this.’”
Whilst in Virginia, alone, Grohl channelled his frustration into something positive, and wrote two new compositions that would help him refocus and finish the album – the pensive Walking After You the cathartic Everlong.
Foo Fighters – Walking After You (Official HD Video) – YouTube
“It wasn’t a surprise to me when Dave came back from Virginia with two good new songs,” Norton states in Paul Brannigan’s Grohl biography This Is A Call. “Dave never stops, he’s constantly trying to better the work that he’s got. But when I heard Everlong, I was like ‘Oh…’ It made the album whole. It was the catalyst that held everything together.”
The song’s inception began with its instantly recognisable intro riff.
“I remember coming up with the riff while recording [lead single] Monkey Wrench,” Grohl told NME. “The song is in drop D tuning, and in between takes I was fooling around and I found that chord.”
Beginning with a Dmaj7 chord with the open bottom D string pedal note, the all-downstroke strumming moves to a Bsus2 shape, which then slides down to Gsus2 and back to Bsus2, before the other instruments join in.
Grohl initially dismissed the riff as being too similar to Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia, but decided to stick with it.
“I didn’t really put it together until we were on [our] Christmas break,” he said. “I demoed it all by myself. It [was] the same song, but just super raw.”
Committed to seeing the album through, Grohl ultimately made the decision to re-record it in full, with sessions moving to Grandmaster studios in LA, and Grohl stepping behind the kit to play the drum parts himself.
Taylor Hawkins, the band’s long-serving drummer who would replace Goldsmith on the following tour, said: “[Grohl] didn’t fire [Goldsmith], he just said, ‘Dude, you’re not ready to make a record yet, and this record’s make or break [for us].’”
But for Goldsmith, the removal of his drum parts cut deep.
He recalled: “Dave said, ‘You know, I still want you to tour the record’, and I was like, ‘As it is now, I need to re-build my soul, re-find it… So thanks but no thanks.’”
Goldsmith left the band for good before the album was finished.
Emboldened by this decision and sticking with his creative vision, Grohl delivered an inspired performance behind the kit across 11 of the album’s 13 songs.
Speaking on the Produce Like a Pro YouTube channel, engineer Bradley Cook said of Grohl: “He was rusty for about two takes, and then just so good after that. He hadn’t played for a long time, and then he was just on fire.”
When it came to his guitar parts Grohl – a die-hard Gibson lover – played the song on his RD Standard through a Fender Tone Master head and a Mesa/Boogie 4×12 cab. Smear, meanwhile, opted for his trusty Hagstrom HiiN, with a Mesa Boogie Studio .22 preamp and a Crest 4801 power amp that mirrored Kurt Cobain’s In Utero touring rig.
Pat Smear also played through a Marshall cab, but kept blowing the speakers – a happy accident, believes Cook: “It sounded really good, so we kept putting new speakers in and kept blowing them. Pat’s sound is a real punky, middley sound complimentary to [Dave’s] Boogie [amp].”
On the pedal front, the guitarists made use of a ProCo Turbo Rat, a ProCo Rat 2, a Kay Fuzz, a Jordan BossTone fuzz and more across the album’s sessions.
The lyrics to Everlong were inspired after Grohl began a brief romance with Louise Post of alt-rock band Veruca Salt. As Grohl told Kerrang!: “It’s about a girl that I’d fallen in love with, and it was basically about being connected to someone so much that not only do you love them physically and spiritually, but when you sing along with them, you harmonise perfectly.”
Fascinatingly, whilst the band were in California, Post recorded backing vocals for the track from Chicago. Singing along as the song played through her landline phone speaker, Norton and Cook mic’d up the speaker of their studio phone – a long-distance contribution that perfectly aligned with the song’s yearning lyrics.
Foo Fighters – Everlong – YouTube
With the album complete, the band had weathered a storm that had seen them lose their drummer, and would ultimately lead to Smear’s departure nine months later due to exhaustion. Grohl, however, had found his mojo, reclaiming his identity as both a musician and a person, and so a reinvigorated Foo Fighters marched on.
The Colour And The Shape was a success for the band, peaking at No 3 in the 1997 UK album charts and at No 10 in the US Billboard 200. It has since gone platinum in six countries.
As a single, Everlong only reached a shrug-worthy number 42 on the US Radio Songs chart by the year-end, but fared much better in the UK, where it peaked at No 2.
“The funny thing about Everlong is that people consider [it] our biggest hit, and people consider that album [our] seminal record, but at the time it wasn’t a huge hit,” admitted Taylor Hawkins to NME. “Dave did an acoustic version later by happenstance [live on The Howard Stern Show], and that got played more than the rock version at first. That song took years to build up the kind of esteem that now has become ‘the great Everlong.’”
But the album and its four singles helped the band’s rise immeasurably.
“We went on the road and we played as many places, as many shows as we could, and it was starting to grow,” Grohl said. “You could see there were 2,000 people, 3,000 people, 4,000 people at gigs.
“We were no longer playing the afternoon slot at the festival. We were playing the evening slot at the festival. And Everlong was on the radio, and all of a sudden there were music videos on MTV and it was happening to us – that thing that happens to new bands as they start to get popular.”
Foo Fighters – Everlong (Official HD Video) – YouTube
The Everlong video was created by French director Michel Gondry, fresh off of a creative hot streak with Bjork, and his iconic ’90s promo clip has it all – Evil Dead references, Grohl with Liberty spike hair, Teddy Boys, a giant dial-up phone, and Hawkins dressed as Grohl’s female companion.
But Gondry originally had an even more elaborate idea. “It took him an hour to explain it,” says Grohl. “I had to tell him, ‘Dude, the song is four fucking minutes long!’ Daryl Hannah was supposed to be my love interest… The whole idea was amazing. He’s a fucking genius. To make a video with him was an honour.”
On top of becoming a fan favourite, the legacy of Everlong has been cemented in popular culture with appearances in TV shows Daria and Friends, as well as the Martin Scorsese film The Wolf Of Wall Street.
Legendary late-night host David Letterman declared it his favourite song, helping him recover from heart surgery back in 2000. The band would honour Letterman by performing Everlong live on his final ever show in 2015.
The already poignant track found even greater emotional significance in March 2022, as it was the last Foo Fighters song publicly performed by Hawkins, onstage at Lollapalooza Argentina just five days before his sudden passing.
Everlong was also performed as the finale at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert, where an emotional Grohl performed solo – its profound lyrics taking on another meaning altogether.
It’s no surprise that the song has become the band’s most-played live number – nearly 1,200 known performances and counting – and closes nearly every show.
“When you play a song like that every night, so many people connect with it, that sort of communal energy makes it magical, every fucking night,” Grohl said. “Every time I sing, ‘If everything could feel this real forever’, and everyone else is singing it in time – that’s pretty powerful. Even on your worst night, it still feels good.”