The Foo Fighters song Bob Dylan considered a favourite
When Dave Grohl was first cutting his teeth with The Foo Fighters, he was never intending to be one of the greatest songwriters in the world. As far as he was concerned, he was in a band with a future songwriting great with Nirvana, only for everything to fall apart when Kurt Cobain was found dead in his home. Though Grohl claimed to just be writing nonsense on the first few Foo Fighters records, one of the biggest names in the business was paying attention.
After going through a marriage breakup midway through the production of The Colour and The Shape, much of the album’s lyrics deal with Grohl handling severe emotional trauma. Though some nasty breakup songs turn up on tracks like ‘Monkey Wrench’, ‘Everlong’ is one of the purest love songs Grohl would ever write, talking about how the music created between two people is the height of romantic bliss.
Inspired by chords from Sonic Youth, Grohl’s lyrics are some of the most revealing of his career, keeping things vague enough for fans to take in, while also being extremely cathartic for someone coming off the heels of losing the love of his life. Then again, Grohl didn’t realise just how much the song would touch people.
During one of their major arena tours, Grohl mentioned opening up for Bob Dylan and being extremely intimidated when he met him, telling Vh1 Storytellers, “Someone said that Bob wants to see me, and I was like, ‘Oh my God! Did I say something wrong?’ I turn around the corner, and there he is. He’s standing there in the dark with a black hoodie, black leather pants and black leather boots standing at the other side of this arena in the dark”.
Although the setting may have looked like Dylan about to unleash the rock and roll Mafia on Grohl, the Foo Fighters frontman got the compliment of his lifetime instead, remembering, “He said, ‘How’s it going? Thanks for being on tour’. He was a really nice guy. And as we’re talking, he said, ‘What’s that song you guys got? The one with the lyrics about promising not to stop when I say when?’ I said, ‘Yeah, ‘Everlong’’. And he tells, ‘Man, you gotta show me how to play that, I want to start doing that song’. At that point, I was just like, ‘you know what I’m done’”.
It’s not like Dylan was a stranger to break up songs, letting his pour out across every minute of his album Blood on the Tracks. Just as Grohl was going through his own personal trauma, Dylan was peeling back the layers of his personality to see where everything went wrong on tracks like ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ and ‘Idiot Wind’.
More than anything, Dylan’s approval of Grohl’s song about heartache was more than just an old rocker passing the torch. For all of the great music that Dylan made throughout his career, he never stopped being a fan of the new school trying to write their own masterpieces.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.