Foo Fighters

Clockwise from top-left: Chris Shiflett, Pat Smear, Nate Mendel, Taylor Hawkins, and Dave Grohl.

"That is an insult to this fine man, Dave Grohl, who has spent the last fifteen years of his life tenaciously fighting foo... and winning!"

—Jon Stewart

Foo Fighters is an alternative rock band, which was formed by Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl after Kurt Cobain's suicide. The band currently comprises Grohl on vocals and rhythm guitar, Chris Shiflett on lead guitar and backing vocals, Pat Smear on second lead guitar, Nate Mendel on bass, and Taylor Hawkins on drums and backing vocals. The name is a reference to a term for unidentified flying objects sighted by pilots during World War II^[1].

Foo Fighters was originally a one-man project started by Dave Grohl after the dissolution of Nirvana (though he had written and recorded future Foo Fighters songs while still in the band), and he plays all the instruments on almost every song on the first, self-titled Foo Fighters album. At first, Grohl hid behind the Foo Fighters name, preferring that people judge the album on its own merits rather than on Grohl's name or the fans' desire to fill the vacuum left by Nirvana. Eddie Vedder played a few songs on his radio show, and the positive response motivated Grohl to move forward.

Grohl decided to draft in a full band for live shows and for the second album, The Colour and the Shape. Bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith came from cultly admired Emo trope codifiers Sunny Day Real Estate, while Pat Smear, a member of the Germs and the fourth member of Nirvana for its last few years, played guitar. Goldsmith left after the album was recorded, as Grohl had replaced most of Goldsmith's drums tracks with his own. Smear left shortly after the album was released. Replacements were found in Taylor Hawkins on drums and Franz Stahl in place of Smear (who was himself replaced by Chris Shifflet after the release of their third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose).

The band has been praised highly by critics, stepping out of the shadow of Nirvana to become one of the most influential alternative rock bands of recent years. To date, all of their albums have been nominated for the "Best Rock Album" Grammy, with four of them actually winning. However, some critics believe that their mainstream popularity and many radio hits mean that Dave Grohl has been "selling out" Kurt Cobain's legacy.

The band's new album Wasting Light was released in April 2011. It was produced by Butch Vig of Nevermind fame, and features Pat Smear back as a full member of the band.

Not to be confused with Foo Fu.

Related Acts:

• Late!
• Nirvana
• Probot
• Them Crooked Vultures
• Queens of the Stone Age (Grohl occasionally plays with them)
• No Use For a Name (Chris Shiflett)
• Jackson United (Chris Shiflett)
• Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (Shiflett too)
• Sunny Day Real Estate (Nate Mendel)
• The Fire Theft (Mendel)
• Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders
• Tenacious D

Members:

• Dave Grohl - Vocals/Secondary Guitar
• Nate Mendel - Bass
• Taylor Hawkins - Drums, Backing Vocals
• Pat Smear - Guitar
• Chris Shiflett - Guitar, Backing Vocals

Former Members:

• Franz Stahl - Guitar
• William Goldsmith - Drums

Discography:

• Foo Fighters (1995)
• The Colour and the Shape (1997)
• There Is Nothing Left to Lose (1999)
• One By One (2002)
• In Your Honor (2005)
• Five Songs and a Cover (2005 EP)
• Skin and Bones (2006) - A live, acoustic album.
• Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace (2007)
• Greatest Hits Album (2009)
• Wasting Light (2011)
• Medium Rare (2011 compilation)
• iTunes Festival: London 2011 (2011 EP)
• Sonic Highways (2014)
• Songs from the Laundry Room (2015 EP)
• Saint Cecilia (2015 EP)
• Concrete and Gold (2017)

Foo Fighters provides examples of the following tropes:

• Album Title Drop: with the album One By One, in the first track "All My Life" ("One by one, hidden up my sleeve").
  • Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace takes its title nearly verbatim from a line in the album's final track, "Home" (Echoes and silence, patience and grace).
  • "Generator" from There Is Nothing Left to Lose fakes-out one of these with the line "When there's nothing left to use".
  • They actually have a song called "The Colour and the Shape", which was released as a bonus track on the 10th anniversary edition of the album The Colour and the Shape; the song title-drops itself and the album by extension.
  • "Miss the Misery" has "Don't change our mind, You're wasting light"
• Audience Participation Song: Foo concerts are basically 2 and a half hour invocations of this trope. Oftentimes the audience sings louder than Dave does, especially during "Best of You", "Times like These", "Rope" (during the "CHOKE! On a kiss, save my breath for you!" part of the chorus), "Learn to Fly", "Arlandria" (Dave does a stop and go portion in the middle of the song, encouraging the crowd to yell along with the guitar chords) and of course "Everlong".
• Badass Beard: Dave, but in recent years, Taylor, Chris and Nate as well.
• Badass Long Hair: Dave (though he cuts it every once in a while), Chris and Taylor.
• Ballad of X: "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners"--which isn't really a ballad at all, being an instrumental song.
  • Doubles as a Heartwarming Moment: During the Beaconsfield Mining disaster, when they finally made contact with the trapped miners and could give them food and water, the miners asked for an MP3 player with Foo Fighters music on it. Dave Grohl was touched by this and sent with them a note saying that the miners had tickets to any Foo Fighters gig when they got out. Dave met with one of the miners after a concert in Sydney and wrote the track on the spot.
• Brain Bleach: Their video for "Keep It Clean" requires a bucket of it. Let's just say it involves a lot of nudity and borders on porn.
• Breakup Breakout: The death of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana was the catalyst for Dave to move out from the drums, and start the Foo Fighters as a one-man project. He is much more well known now than he was when he was "just" the drummer for Nirvana.
• The Cameo:
  • Greg Dulli of The Afghan Wings plays guitar on "X-Static".
  • Brian May plays guitar on "Tired of You", and Grohl's former bandmate Krist Novoselic reportedly sings backing vocals on b-side "Walking a Line".
  • "Virginia Moon" is a duet with Norah Jones, Josh Homme plays guitar on "Razor", and John Paul Jones plays mandolin on "Another Round" and piano on "Miracle".
  • Kaki King plays guitar on "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners", while then touring band member Pat Smear plays guitar on "Let It Die".
  • Grohl's idol Bob Mould of Husker Du sings and plays guitar on "Dear Rosemary", Krist Novoselic plays bass and accordion in "I Should Have Known", and Fee Waybill of The Tubes sings backing vocals on "Miss the Misery".
• Careful with That Axe: Dave already screams a lot, but "In Your Honor" has one that falls straight into this.
• Cover Version: Many, which were compiled in the limited edition Cover Album Medium Rare. Most notable is Prince's "Darling Nikki" (see more on Shout-Out)
• Distinct Double Album: In Your Honor. First disc with a more typical rock sound, and a second disc of more mellow acoustic music.
• Doting Parent: Dave to his two daughters. After the 2012 Grammys when he was asked how he stays so grounded, and his response was having kids who "don't fucking care that [I'm] a rockstar" and "don't give a shit" that he's in the Foo Fighters, and say stuff like "Daddy, I need a smootie. Now." to which Dave responds "Okaaay..."
• Fake-Out Fade-Out \ Stop and Go: "Monkey Wrench", "Next Year".
  • The 7-minute long "Come Back" has a rather elaborate fade fake out that fades to just one instrument. Which then picks up others. Which develops into a long musical piece. Which then fades out... and finishes off with a final chorus.
  • "Rope" takes this to new heights by doing it twice, once around the 2:45 mark, and again at the 4 minute mark.
    • The second break is more like an example of Book Ends, since it's the same echoed chords at the beginning.
  • When "Let It Die" appears to end, it returns with a full blast (it's almost Epic Rocking).
  • Both "In Your Honor" and "White Limo" have breaks that return with a blood-curling scream.
• Five-Man Band
  • The Hero: Dave (of course)
  • The Lancer: Taylor
  • The Smart Guy: Nate
  • The Big Guy: Chris and Pat
  • Sixth Ranger: Rami Jaffee (the keyboardist both live and on the last three albums)
• Fun Personified: Dave and Taylor (Nate even expressed fear when the latter entered the band as he thought two goofballs would be hard to stomach).
• Garage Band: Not only they sound like one, but Wasting Light was recorded in Dave's garage.
• Genre Roulette: Both In Your Honor (particularly in the acoustic album) and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (hard rock, alternative rock, surf rock, acoustic songs, a heartfelt piano ballad...)
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: The band is named after a World War II-era term for UFO's.
  • Grohl is on record as saying he hates the name, and would never have used it if he'd thought the band would get anywhere.
• Ho Yay: Invoked Trope often and gladly by Dave with Taylor. If you're going to see them live, expect to hear some serious flirting between the two.
  • Taken to truly preposterous levels with their new video. Behold. (NSFW)
• Last-Note Nightmare: More than a few songs have a fake-out ending.
• Loudness War: One By One was widely derided for playing into this trope, and is considered by all, including the band itself, as their worst album. Compare say.. "Times Like These", with its muddy, distorted guitars and drums that bleed into the rest of the instruments, with "The Pretender" and its crisp distinctive sounds.
  • The Colour And The Shape regularly flitters between maxed out and dynamic, which makes it somewhat exhausting to listen to all the way through.
  • Wasting Light regular version is incredibly obvious, and odd since the entire thing was record on tape to recreate the 'garage experience'. There's a special vinyl edition which is normal.
• Metal Scream: Except for slow ballads such as "Big Me" and "Walking After You", every song has Dave yelling the lyrics at least once ("Best of You" is one of the most yelled).
  • The entire bridge of "Monkey Wrench", between the second and the third choruses, is yelled out nonstop.
  • Dave starts singing "Let It Die" in a rather quiet manner... then after a a short break he goes louder, culminating in a full throttle scream by the end.
  • "White Limo". Add the vocals being modulated, and the studio version is borderline unintelligible.
  • "Weenie Beenie". The vocals are modulated and screamed, and constitute epicness.
• Mondegreen: Taylor Hawkins once admitted in an interview with MTV that he used to think the line "What do you do when all your enemies are friends?" from the song "Monkey Wrench" was actually "What do you do when all your enemies are French?"
• Music Video Tropes:
  • Dress Rehearsal Video: "All My Life". "The Pretender" appears to be this, then the Culture Police show up in Riot Gear. Then the wall explodes with water and epic rocking out ensues. "Times Like These" has the band in front of a green screen in one version of the video.
  • Stock Footage: The ends of "Long Road to Ruin" and "White Limo" both use the same footage of a car flying off of a cliff.
  • Surreal Music Video: "Everlong". Takes place partially in dreams, but not All Just a Dream as such. It involves giant phones, band members discarding false skins to reveal their true identities, and Dave Grohl (in-character) gaining a massive right hand with which to administer bitch slaps of death. It's directed by Michel Gondry, one of the kings of surrealist videos
    • "Monkey Wrench" is also pretty weird, with the multiple versions of the band.
    • "DOA" features a world that slowly does a 360-degree roll over the course of the video, subtitled lines from both humans and animals that don't match the context, and mixed color and black-and-white. And that's just the beginning. Nothing is certain except that it's set on a train.
  • Video Full of Film Clips: "Breakout" (though it justifies, by having Dave and Traylor Howard going to a drive-in to see Me, Myself and Irene - on which Howard stars...) and "The One" (it even opens with Dave reenacting a sequence of Orange County).
  • Window Love: "Walking After You".
• Must Have Caffeine: Dave ended up in the hospital once with chest pains after his work schedule drove him to downing 6 pots of coffee a day. Being the person he is, it didn't take long for him to revel in the situation.
• New Sound Album: After the first two post-grunge sounding albums, the next was more pop-rock oriented, whilst later albums have included a complete acoustic set. This lead to a return to heavy, straight-to-the-point rock in Wasting Light.;
• Nice Guy: Dave has a strong reputation as this among other musicians.
• Non-Appearing Title: "Hey, Johnny Park!", "Oh, George", "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)" and "White Limo".
• Notable Music Videos: The band often produce playful, innovative music videos ("We take our music seriously. But music videos? They're candy commercials, we can liven up on them!"):
  • "Learn To Fly": Consists of the three Foo Fighters playing almost every character in the video. Dave Grohl plays a teenage girl who recognizes Dave Grohl himself and asks him for his autograph and also plays a gay steward who gives the eyes to - you guessed it - Dave Grohl, the pilot. There's a cameo by Grohl's friends Tenacious D at the beginning and end of the time
  • "Big Me": A 2-minute parody of Mentos commercials, which involves huge grins, the band moving a car, and Dave with pony tails and wearing a dress.
    • They stopped playing it for a while because audiences would throw Mentos at them - and according to Dave, "It's like being stoned. Those little … things are like pebbles – they hurt".
  • "Long Road to Ruin" where the band members and Rashida Jones play actors on a soap opera. It's quite funny.
  • "Walk" has Dave undergoing his own version of Falling Down.
• Old Format, New Work: Wasting Light was recorded using entirely analogue equipment until post-mastering.
• Precision F-Strike: A few songs, specially "Word Forward".
  • On the other hand, at concerts, Dave Grohl is Cluster F-Bomb incarnated.
• Protest Song: "The Pretender" is generally considered to be about the George W. Bush presidential administration, but the full interpretation is kept somewhat vague to allow listeners to make their own interpretation and gain their own inspiration for their own issues.
• Revolving Door Band: Dave felt the band was turning into this around 2000 (on which half of the original band, plus the replacement guitarist, had left). Chris even said he was afraid he would either be fired or the band would end just because he had joined!
• Rock Trio: Dave, Nate and Taylor recorded There's Nothing Left to Lose as one. For the tour, they decided that they needed a second guitarist again and hired Chris after auditions.
• Rockumentary: Back and Forth
• Sanity Slippage Song: "Breakout". ("I may be crazy, little frayed around the ends...")
• Scatting: The start of "Generator" with the robotic talk box.
• Self-Backing Vocalist: Dave is the only vocalist on the vast majority of their tracks.
• Self-Titled Album: Foo Fighters.
• Shout-Out: The opening riff in "A Matter of Time" is a very pleasant nod to "Tom Sawyer".
  • Probably one of the biggest ones the Foos will ever get is when Prince covered "Best of You" during his Super Bowl halftime show medley in 2007. This of course was after the Foos had done their own Prince Shout-Out by covering "Darling Nikki"... to which Prince complained and didn't let the band release it in the States. Whether covering their song is hypocrisy or irony, you pick.
  • Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners is a shoutout to the trapped Beaconsfield Miners. (see Ballad of X).
  • The Last Song is a shout out...to themselves. The main riff is identical to the main riff in Breakout.
• Signature Song: "Everlong".
• Step Up to the Microphone: "Cold Day in the Sun" and their covers of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" and Joe Walsh's "Life of Illusion" is sung by Taylor Hawkins. Covers of "Danny Says" by The Ramones and "Kiss the Bottle" by Jawbreaker are sung by Chris Shiflett.
• Surfer Dude: How Nate Mendel described his first impression of Taylor Hawkins.
• Surprisingly Gentle Song: "Walking After You", "Aurora", "Doll", "Big Me", "February Stars", "Stranger Things Have Happened", and the whole second disc of In Your Honor.
• Take That: A few songs are complaints against the ever-greedy Courtney Love, from "I'll Stick Around" ("I don't owe you anything!"), to "Let It Die".
  • As part of its Whole-Plot Reference to Falling Down, the "Walk" video opens with Dave Grohl stuck in a traffic jam and being increasingly annoyed by the behavior of those around him and text around him. Among these is "Punk is Dead" in a wall, and stickers reading "Bieber is my co-pilot" "Thank You, President Bush" and "Coldplay".^[2]
  • A less-than-peaceful church from Kansas that isn't worth naming tried to protest a 2011 concert. Their response was to dress up like hicks and sing a country song about loving everyone. The best part was that the band stood right in front of the protestors during the performance.
• Textless Album Cover: There Is Nothing Left to Lose has no text, just a picture of Dave Grohl's FF tattoo on his neck.
  • Most copies of the album have a red sticker indicating the album title, singles and if it features enhanced sections or bonus tracks.
• True Companions: Related to the above: the band took a break from recording, during which Dave played with the QOTSA and even considered disbanding the Foo Fighters... and then noticed he was missing the band, which even inspired him to write "Times Like These".
• Unplugged Version: A whole disc in In Your Honor are unplugged songs, they released a live album of unplugged songs (Skin and Bones) and they also have several slower songs on their 6th album Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace.
  • There is also "See You" , "Floaty" and "Ain't This The Life" as b-sides.
• Uncommon Time: A few songs are written in 4/4 time, but not all of them.
• Word Salad Lyrics: Specially on the first album, where Grohl admitted he wrote whatever he could think the twenty minutes before recording.
• Your Makeup Is Running: The Non-Appearing Title of one of their songs ("Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)"), probably taking a potshot at the Emo scene.
  • Although possibly a Artifact Title, as Dave Grohl said that this was a working title that had nothing to do with the song, it just stuck because it was funny.

1. ↑ , which in turn harkens back to "foo lights", a New England term referring to the glowing lights produced by swamp gas, and produced the metasyntactic variables foo and foobar
2. ↑ The last one is only a joke, Dave likes the band, and said that "We don't hate Coldplay, we just like to make fun of them"