What did Dave Grohl actually whisper in the Foo Fighters song ‘Everlong’?
If there’s one song that can be said to encapsulate the Foo Fighters, it is surely their 1997 hit ‘Everlong’. The song has been a firm fan-favourite ever since it appeared on The Colour and the Shape. Since the tragic news of Taylor Hawkins’ death, we’ve all been listening to classic Foo tracks with new ears, leading many to pay closer attention to some of the band’s more subtle production techniques. And yet the question remains: what is Dave Grohl whispering in ‘Everlong’?
‘Everlong‘ is undoubtedly the stand-out moment from The Colour and The Shape. Alongside ‘Monkey Wrench’, it marked the moment Foo Fighters went from being ‘the band of that Nirvana drummer’ to one of the great rock outfits of the new millennium. ‘Everlong’ came together in just 45 minutes shortly after Christmas, 1996. Describing the motivation behind the song’s lyrics – reportedly written about Veruca Salty member Louise Post – Grohl told Kerrang!: “That song’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 harmonize perfectly”.
As the track moves towards its final climactic chorus, a whisper can be heard beneath the main vocal. It’s clearly Grohl’s voice, but it’s nearly impossible to make out what he’s saying. Well, according to the official Foo Fighters newsgroup, the whisper track is made up of three distinct messages: a “love letter,” a “technical manual,” and a “story about a studio technician’s father”.
In a 2019 video, recording engineer Bradley Cook broke down ‘Everlong’ track by track. Discussing the whisper track, Cook recalled how his colleague, Ryan Bosch, used to tell the band a story about how his father would “come home from his night job, and he had to sleep in the daytime. When he and his brother were too loud, his dad would give them military punishment [raises arms] and [make them] hold [his] boots at the foot of his bed, hold them up while he slept. That’s Dave retelling the story.”
Thanks to players of the 2008 game Rock Band 2, we can say with some certainty that the whisper track includes the following passage: “So Dad would take the Sundays off / And that’s the only time he could ever get any rest / And so, because we were loud on Sundays / He’d make us hold his construction boots over our head, till he’d sleep / And they were really heavy boots / And I used to say, dad come on, please / And like start crying, ’cause they’re too heavy.”
Cook wasn’t able to remember a love letter, but he did recall Grohl reading from a book. “I don’t know if it was a tech book or just some book,” the engineer began. “So we did three tracks — it was Ryan’s story and a couple of tracks of him reading from some random book. But … it appears it’s just the story at first, and then the other stuff jumps in. I haven’t thought about this for so long.”
All that remains, then, is the love letter. Well, according to Louise Post, Grohl asked her to provide additional vocals for the track over the phone. In an Instagram caption shared alongside an isolated vocal take of ‘Everlong’, Post wrote: “I sang these back-ups over the phone at 2am after being woken up from a deep sleep in Chicago by DG who was tracking the vocals for ‘Everlong’ in LA. He wanted me to sing the doo-doo’s, which were inspired by our song ‘Shimmer Like a Girl’. While I was at it, I wrote a harmony for the chorus and sang that too. The whispered section of this song was originally the dream I was having when the phone rang. It was a dream about us. He later removed it and replaced with his own whispers, one which was a love letter to me.”
Sadly, we’re unlike to see the fabled letter, meaning one last piece of the ‘Everlong’ puzzle remains.
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