- Music
- 20 May 16
Foo Fighter's The Colour and The Shape turns 19 years old today. To celebrate its birthday we take a look back at its best tracks and Stuart Clarke's interview with Dave Grohl before last year's historic Slane Caslte gig.
The Colour and The Shape was the second album released by Foo Fighters way back on May 20 1997. It proved to be a very successful record for the still young Foos when it reached no.10 in the US album charts and no.3 in the UK. After selling 1.9 million copies in the US it received a platinum certification.
It also helped to cement Foo Fighters as stalwarts of rock and roll. Here we take a look back at the album's most memorable tracks and an interview with Dave Grohl before their infamously muddy Slane Castle gig in May 2015. The songs appear here in the same order as they do on the album but not chronologically.
Monkey Wrench
First we've got the second track off the album, 'Monkey Wrench'. This high octane, blistering track opens the album up and prepares the listener for the other tracks on the record. Here Grohl pushes his vocal chords to their shrieking limits while still driving the song forward with a perfectly growly guitar tone. Couple this to a slightly Inception like music video and you've got a classic on your hands.
My Hero
Its easy to forget that Grohl is also an incredibly proficient drummer as well as a guitarist. So much so he is responsible for this diamond of a track. 'My Hero' was written by Grohl about the "ordinary, everyday heroes" of the world. While Taylor Hawkins is currently Foo Fighters' drummer, Grohl wrote and recorded the drum line for this song with Hawkins only appearing behind the kit in the video. The song as serves as one of the most widely recognisable drum intros out there.
Everlong
Here's a slightly different beast. 'Everlong' has been a staple of the band's live set since it was first released as a single. Again Grohl is responsible for the majority of the song's composition. He recorded the vocals and drums as well as one of the guitar lines. The video is also quite surreal as it takes place in the somehow connected dreams of Grohl and Hawkins' married couple characters in the video. It takes on trippy elements of dreamscape before storming in to the last chorus to finish it out. An acoustic version of the song was released on a greatest hits album in 2009 has also proven extremely popular.
For even more Foo Fighters check out Stuart Clarke's 2015 interview with Dave Grohl about Foo fighters playing Slane and almost moving to Belfast as a child.