Chris Shiflett names his favourite Foo Fighters song
The Foo Fighters are the closest thing to a band of brothers in the rock world. Even after the tragic passing of Taylor Hawkins, Dave Grohl has been determined to keep the band’s spirit alive with the rest of the group, as everyone holds things together to bring the same energy they had back in their early days. As the band entered the 2000s, though, there was a good chance that we weren’t going to hear from The Foos ever again.
After performing the album There Is Nothing Left to Lose as a trio, the road to making their follow-up One By One was disastrous, with Grohl never thinking that the band was cutting it correctly in the studio. Although Chris Shiflett was often frustrated about not doing anything during the sessions, he did single out one of the hits from the record as one of his all-time favourite Foo Fighters songs.
When speaking with On the Guest List, Shiflett pointed to ‘All My Life’ as his favourite Foo Fighters song, saying, “I remember when Dave gave us the demos for that record, and there were no vocals on it. That’s a trippy song because, to my ear, that riff is the hook. Sometimes it’s a vocal melody, sometimes it’s whatever, but it always goes back to that guitar”.
The road to making that part of the record was not the most pleasant experience for Shiflett, though, who would later remember in the documentary Back and Forth, “The energy sucked. I was just sitting there in the studio, and I would just thinking that I would sit there and mess around and drink coffee for hours and then go home”.
After the band blew up at each other before a headlining festival gig, Grohl knew that the next plan was to scrap their original plan and jam as they did in the old days, returning to his home studio and rebuilding the whole thing from scratch. Grohl would also consider the song a favourite, recalling, “The difference between the first version of ‘All My Life’ and the second is that the first one cost a million dollars and sounded like crap, and the other one was made in my basement in a few hours and became one of the greatest songs that The Foo Fighters ever made”.
It’s easy to see where Grohl is getting his songwriting ideas. Regardless of its punk rock sound throughout the verses, Grohl approaches the song like a drumset, almost using the central riff as the kick drum before the rest of the band comes screaming in behind him for the rest of the tune. Outside of the massive riff, Shiflett would mention that it’s his favourite song to play live, recalling that whenever he thinks he’s having a bad show, their performance gets back on track when they play through the tune.
At a time when The Foo Fighters could have easily floundered and Grohl could have spun the band into a solo career, ‘All My Life’ remains one of the most indicative tunes of what the band is today. They may have gone through Hell, but this song keeps bringing them back from the brink.
