The Foo Fighters song with a guest appearance from Brian May
From the looks of them onstage, Foo Fighters tends to feel like one big musical family. Although Dave Grohl could have easily made the group his mini-solo outfit when cutting the debut album, his choice to bring a band in behind him made for the most powerful performances in rock over the past two decades. As the 2000s were dawning, though, there was a good chance that that camaraderie would fall apart.
While making what would become One By One, Grohl had begun working on material before going on tour with Queens of the Stone Age. Needing a drummer for the album Songs for the Deaf, Grohl stepped in to play alongside Joshua Homme, which led to growing animosity between him and Taylor Hawkins.
Having gone through a traumatic experience on tour after a drug overdose, Hawkins wasn’t looking to be happy for Grohl for going on tour with someone else. As the band prepared for the mainstage gig at a festival, a massive fight broke out between Hawkins and Grohl during rehearsal, with Hawkins recalling in Back and Forth, “If the Foo Fighters were over, then the Foo Fighters are over, and I’m okay with that.”
Instead of folding the band, Grohl decided to return to the studio with some new energy and see how the record would come out. Working out of his basement, Grohl’s updated versions of the songs paled in comparison to the massive big-budget sounds he was working with before.
Although Grohl has been partial to tracks like ‘Times Like These’ and ‘All My Life’, one of the quietest moments on the record features rock royalty behind it. While the song ‘Tired of You’ thrives from its slow burn and Grohl’s subdued vocal performance, the standout instrumental section comes in the chorus, featuring a wall of harmonised guitars.
Rather than layer one on top of the other, Grough brought Brian May of Queen into the studio to lay down the parts. Considering Queen’s history for multiple layers of vocal harmony, May employs the same concept, creating blocks of chords played on an eBow that slowly move down the fretboard.
Grohl would later recall the thrill of getting to work with May, telling Songfacts, “He’s the only guest appearance on the record, but you wouldn’t even have to put his f–king name on the album because someone would hear that song and be like ‘oh my god – that sounds like Queen.'”
This would lead to a longstanding friendship between Foo Fighters and the former members of Queen, with the band performing a version of ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ during a handful of stadium gigs. Although the studio sessions went well, don’t expect ‘Tired of You’ to ever meet the live stage.
While the back half of One By One features standout performances on tracks like ‘Disenchanted Lullaby’ and the beautiful closer ‘Come Back’, Grohl has remained cold to the rest of the songs. Outside of the central singles, Grohl loathes the back half of the record, telling Rolling Stone, “Four of the songs were good, and the other seven I’ve never played again in my life.”
Despite Grohl slamming the record, May would remain close with the band members, performing alongside Taylor at the Taylor Hawkins Memorial concerts at Wembley Stadium. Even though Foo Fighters were still relatively green, getting Brian May on their record was like being anointed by a rock god.
