The Foo Fighters track Dave Grohl retired for years: “Fuck this song”
The existence of Foo Fighters in the mid-1990s would have been considered a small miracle. As Dave Grohl was still reeling from the loss of Kurt Cobain, his willingness to push past his funk and make something completely different led to him forming one of the most essential acts in rock music. Although the first album began as a labour of love from Grohl, not every song was perfect.
From Grohl’s perspective, the whole album was just a collection of his favourite songs that he had performed by himself in a studio after Nirvana disbanded. Although most of the song lyrics are borderline incoherent from one line to the next, ‘Big Me’ was the closest to a silly love song Grohl would ever get.
Written around a smooth chord progression and Grohl’s boy-next-door-type voice, the two minutes of this song absolutely fly by, giving The Beatles a run for their money in terms of writing saccharine pop songs. While Grohl was proud of it then, some pain would come a few months later.
When talking to VH1 Storytellers, Grohl opened up about the process of making music videos. After going through thousands of pitches from directors about what they wanted the video to be, the one that caught his eye only had one sentence: “You ever seen those Mentos commercials?”.
Being one of the chipper advertising campaigns out then, the sales pitch for most Mentos ads would feature people going through life’s hardships but bearing an uncomfortably large grin whenever they ate Mentos. For Grohl, it almost made too much sense, considering the song already sounded like some advertisement.
As a riff on the theme, Grohl and the newly assembled Foo Fighters mugged as much as they could for the camera, including shots of them moving a car and Grohl crossing the street by going through the doors of a stretch limousine. Though Grohl would normally be reprimanded, the off-brand ‘Footos’ always came to the rescue.
While everyone got the joke, Grohl was in for a rude awakening when he started playing the song live, recalling, “The first night of the tour in Denver. I said, ‘This song’s called ‘Big Me’’, and it was like riot guns of Mentos being thrown at us. I said, ‘Fuck this song, I don’t play this song again,’ and we stopped playing it for like ten years”.
Grohl even took some time during award shows to air his grievances. When accepting an award for the music video, he used his speech as a public service announcement for fans not to throw any more of those candies at them at the show.
But that was in 1995. Time can heal many wounds, and things would surely be better once they hit the ‘00s, right? Wrong. After dusting the song off and seeing someone throw Mentos onstage, Grohl stopped the show, remembering, “We walk up to play that song. Sure as hell, someone throws a full pack right in the face. I stop and say, ‘You know what, it’s been ten years. Enough. I’ll burn this pack of Mentos onstage so that we can have this ritualistic ending’. So, I looked around for my lighter, and I couldn’t find it. Sure enough, 10,000 people threw their fucking lighters at my face”.
Regardless of the band’s wear and tear, ‘Big Me’ remains one of the few shining lights to come out of the first era of Foo Fighters. Life after Kurt Cobain may have looked bleak for Grohl, but it would never be all bad if he had songs like this behind him.
