The Foo Fighters song Dave Grohl always struggled to play: “I wanted to smash a guitar”
Is there any instrument that Dave Grohl hasn’t mastered yet?
While he would be the first to tell you that he doesn’t know much about music theory, it takes a master’s touch to be able to squeeze a tune out of almost any instrument that one gets their hands on, and Grohl somehow makes all of it look easy. When it comes to finishing the details, though, Grohl thought it was a nightmare putting together the song ‘I Should Have Known’ off Wasting Light.
But in theory, making that kind of album should have been one of the easiest things in the world. The Foo Fighters had been around the world and played some of the biggest shows of their career, and now all there was left to do was make an album where they went to the roots of where they started back in the 1990s.
That meant stripping things down and getting back into Grohl’s garage. The only issue was trying to get the entire record down on tape, which meant getting a performance right from top to bottom whenever they played a song. While Taylor Hawkins was shown physically struggling during the documentary Back and Forth on tracks like ‘These Days’, Grohl knew something needed to go into ‘I Should Have Known’ so it would sound right.
Because when you look at what the song is about, there’s still some connective tissue left over from his time in Nirvana. Outside of the more moody breakdown, Grohl spends most of the piece taking inventory of his life and remembering all the days when he should have known when something was going to go wrong. It doesn’t explicitly say anything about Kurt Cobain, but there are different pieces that are linked to Grohl’s time in Seattle’s greatest rock band.
There is a sense throughout the track that Grohl is not just reflecting, but trying to process something that never quite settled. The lyrics carry a quiet tension, as if he is circling around thoughts that are difficult to confront directly. It gives the song a different kind of intensity, one that does not rely on volume or speed but instead builds through repetition and restraint.
That emotional undercurrent also changes the way the music itself is delivered. Rather than leaning into the explosive tendencies that Foo Fighters are known for, the arrangement feels more measured, allowing each part to land with greater significance. It is a subtle shift, but one that gives the track a weight that lingers long after it finishes, tying the performance closely to the sentiment behind it.
When it came time to play the opening riff of the song, Grohl remembered clamming it up one too many times for his liking, saying, “There were moments of frustration when I remember wanting to smash a fucking guitar. The opening riff to ‘I Should Have Known’, I tried really hard to make it sound great, and I don’t usually want things to sound perfect, but sometimes you want things to be just right.”
This is still a Foo Fighters song from the skin to the core, but the real meat of the piece came when Krist Novoselic showed up to play bass on the track. Considering his goofball demeanour in Nirvana’s prime, it’s easy to forget how important his bass playing was to their sound, especially in this song, where he sounds like a monster bubbling up from the ocean during the track’s final chorus.
In fact, if you remove the rest of the band members, this could be considered a glorified Nirvana reunion song since Grohl and Pat Smear both play on the final track. While Cobain could never be replaced, it’s easy to feel his spirit in the piece, complete with that same kind of angst he was so good at expressing back in the early 1990s.
But this isn’t meant to say that Foo Fighters are continuing what Nirvana was supposed to do. That group would forever be kept in the past, but it’s nice to have tracks like ‘I Should Have Known’ to reflect on what you could have done differently and also remember all the good times as well.
