The Foo Fighters album Dave Grohl didn’t want to release: “It still feels premature”
Not every artist has to stand by everything they make. They may put on a happy face during the press junket and try their best to sell whatever they are associated with, but if something doesn’t hold up over time, you’d be surprised how many people agree with your assessment of their work. Sometimes, things just don’t work out the way they should, and when it came time for Foo Fighters to make a greatest hits album, Dave Grohl wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about releasing it.
When you think about it, greatest hits packages tend to be a touchy subject for bands. Even though they may have built up a strong lineup of classics that have gotten them this far, releasing a compilation of all the highlights usually feels like the beginning of the end when it comes to their brand.
The artists themselves might just see a petty cash grab, but all the label sees are dollar signs. After all, what better way to appeal to the masses than having a one-stop shop for all the hits? It’s not like it hasn’t worked, either, given that the greatest hits packages by Eagles and Elton John are among the best-selling projects in their body of work.
Once Grohl was tasked with creating a greatest hits compilation for Foo Fighters, it did seem a bit too soon. The band had barely been around for 15 years, so releasing a retrospective that implies that their best years have already happened tends to feel a little bit too early.
At first, Grohl wasn’t that happy, recalling, “It still seems premature because we’re still a functioning, active band. Those things can look like an obituary. We were asked to do this a long time ago. We wrote it into a deal a long time ago – that’s how it works…It’s like a CliffsNotes version of what we’ve been doing for the last 15 years. I think there are better songs than some of those”.
If you picked up the actual disc, there are some noticeable exclusions. While the biggest tracks are accounted for, like ‘Everlong’ and ‘Monkey Wrench’, not including a track like ‘Next Year’ tends to break up the flow of the record. Also, while it’s admirable to put the acoustic ‘Skin and Bones’ on the track listing, it does feel a bit cheeky, given that almost the entirety of the acoustic side of In Your Honour isn’t included.
And at the risk of being a little bit cheeky, it’s not like the original numbers recorded for the album are the best that the band have ever made. The song ‘Wheels’ may have gotten famous for a good reason, but there’s not really much behind the hook compared to the other landmark pieces of the group’s greatest hits.
If it looked like Foo Fighters were over the hill, though, they corrected that and then some on Wasting Light, bringing themselves back to the days of playing as a band in a scrappy garage. Greatest Hits might be a good way of getting used to what Foo Fighters are all about, but if you stop there, you’re still leaving their best songs on the table.
