‘New Fang’: The song that formed Them Crooked Vultures
There’s hardly any piece of rock and roll that Dave Grohl hasn’t managed to touch. Even though he is more than happy to stand at the front of the stage with Foo Fighters whenever he puts on a stadium show, his mission throughout his life is to perform with as many bands as possible to make sure that he’s never bored. He may have lucked into the chance of a lifetime when forming Them Crooked Vultures, but it only took a few notes for every member of the supergroup to start speaking the same language.
It’s not like all of them weren’t friendly with each other beforehand, either. Grohl had been practically musical soulmates with Josh Homme ever since working on Queens of The Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf, and even after working together on that album, ‘My God is the Sun’ is further proof that Grohl was always at home playing drums for the stoner-rock outfit in his free time.
The big gamble was always going to be John Paul Jones. Even though the Led Zeppelin bassist had turned in time working on plenty of rock and roll classics behind the scenes, it’s probably not easy to call a rock and roll legend out of the blue and ask them to work on a project together. Then again, that’s only if one didn’t know how eclectic Jonesy could be with any instrument in his hands.
Even outside of Zeppelin’s run, Jones could play any sound that came into his head, and when working on some of his solo outings like The Thunderthief, he was more than willing to throw down the same way Homme could. And since he had a knack for keyboard parts and string arrangements, there was also a lot more room for the trio to grow if they wanted to make something more grandiose.
But that was never what they were about. Looking through most of the band’s first record, it feels like the band jamming on riffs in their garage while the tape rolled, leading to many songs feeling really off-the-cuff. There might have been the odd song that didn’t come together, but once everyone locked in playing the song ‘New Fang’, they knew that there was some true magic there.
Despite most bands taking forever to get the right tune together, Grohl remembered everything being done almost comically fast, saying, “It wasn’t long before Josh said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a riff.’ I think the first riff we jammed on was ‘New Fang’, which became our first single. We wrote a middle section, and within an hour or two, we had an arrangement.”
At the same time, Homme’s reputation as the composer of some of the heaviest rock riffs was no match for what Jones brought to the table. For someone who had taken years away from his prime years in Zeppelin, hearing everyone hit on the groove during the song’s bridge is the heaviest thing that Jones ever played, especially with the amps sounding like they were on fire in the studio.
Even if many of the band members are interested in doing their own things for now, ‘New Fang’ is still a beautiful snapshot of a moment in time when everyone clicked. Whereas most supergroups might have launched themselves into the stratosphere to sell a bunch of records, the pure spontaneity of this session all seemed to be done for the love of the sport.
