Gay4Grunge: The Foo Fighters

Of all the bands in Grunge and 90s Alternative, The Foo Fighters are the band I remember hearing from almost the very beginning of their career and being witness to their evolution from that point forward. I started off as a casual fan of the Foo Fighters in the late 90s, and became a huge fan by the 2000s. I've seen the band live 3 times now and I had every album of theirs on CD up through Sonic Highways. While Alternative Rock as a whole went through various changes that saw multiple bands and subgenres come and go over the past few decades, The Foo Fighters have remained a staple since their debut album in 1995. No matter what was going on in music you could always depend on The Foo Fighters to release a new album every 2 to 3 years that would feature at least 2 or 3 singles that would blanket rock radio. I got into Alternative Rock and Grunge much more deeply in the 00s, but I didn't always like a lot of modern rock at the time, but I was listening to catch the 90s oldies they would still play in between the new rock music. Still as a band that originated in the mid-90s, I was already into The Foo Fighters and I always enjoyed hearing their new music, which helped make rock radio more tolerable for me in the 2000s before Alternative Rock radio got a bump up in quality around 2009. 

Still let's start at the beginning and my introduction to the Foo Fighters was once again through Beavis & Butthead, but this time it was the first full episode I had ever seen of Beavis & Butthead. Now I've mentioned Beavis & Butthead a lot in these articles without discussing my history with that show so let me take a moment to do so. I actually first saw the show around 1993 when a neighbor who was in high school babysat me and my brother one night and he put the show on. It was the early episodes of Beavis & Butthead where they were kind of evil instead of being lovable delinquents later on. The episode scared the crap out of 7-year-old me and I swore off the show for a few years. 

By 1996 though I had become a little interested in watching the show again and some of my friends were staying over and wanted to show it to me. I had to ask my parents’ permission first to watch it, which they allowed but my younger brother couldn't watch it yet and my Dad would check in to see how we were doing and more importantly to see what the show was doing. The episode we watched was Date Watchers where Beavis & Butthead follow their teacher home from his date with a woman in hopes of seeing them get it on. It was during one of the music videos for that episode that I saw The Foo Fighters first ever video for I'll Stick Around, which had been recently released. My friends knew who The Foo Fighters were and they knew who Nirvana was too, but I had no idea at that time because I still wasn't really a music fan at that point at age 10. By the following year that would all change. 

I initially started watching MTV to catch episodes of Beavis & Butthead, but by the Spring of 1997 I had discovered the Spice Girls, which turned me into a pop music fan overnight. From that point forward I was watching MTV all day every day, especially in the summer. During that summer the music video for Everlong was played all the time so I saw it every day multiple times a day that entire summer. I recognized the band thanks to Beavis & Butthead and I remember thinking the video was pretty cool and that their drummer Taylor Hawkins looked pretty good in drag. I liked it enough to tape it on a VHS, which back then I just had a VHS tape in the VCR all the time so I could tape any music videos that caught my attention. As the 1997 VMAS approached I saw the music video for Monkey Wrench since it was nominated and I remember liking that song too, which proved I liked hard rock from the start, it just had to have enough melody to draw me in. I also remember going to a water park that year in California and hearing Monkey Wrench over the speakers at one point too. 

At some point I also saw the music video for Big Me, which saw the band spoof those ridiculous Mentos commercials that were everywhere in the 90s. I remember laughing out loud when I saw the video and it was clear that this band had a great sense of humor that really endeared me to them more. I remember seeing the video for My Hero, though it wasn't played as much as Everlong had been, though MTV would use My Hero in all the ads and trailers for Varsity Blues, which MTV produced themselves. Every time I hear My Hero, I usually think about James Van Der Beek throwing a football at the screen. I didn't see the movie though but all my so-called friends saw it together as a group and they decided not to invite me to it, which again made me feel pretty shitty. This was probably another example of something that helped push me deeper into the closet at that time since I could tell the other boys didn't see me as the same as them. 

By the end of 1999 we moved from California to Rhode Island and it was in the middle of 8th grade. Needless to say, that was another really rough year for me since I couldn't seem to make any friends and I got picked on mercilessly too. In a lot of ways that really shut the closet door completely for me. Even though my fellow students stopped picking on me by high school, I never trusted them again and throughout high school I would remain deeply in the closet and not date any girls or hang out with other guys after school. Now around the time we moved to Rhode Island was when the Foo Fighters put out the first single to their next album Nothing Left to Lose. The song was Learn to Fly and it featured one of the best and funniest music videos of its time. With the band portraying multiple different characters, Learn to Fly became an instant favorite for MTV and VH1 so I saw that music video a lot back then. I remember thinking Taylor looked even better in drag in this video compared to Everlong. My Dad also loved the video and the song and this is when he started becoming more of a Foo Fighters fan as well. I also remember watching the Making of the Video for Breakout, which was another funny music video as well. 

Fast forward to 2002, aka the year I became Grunge obsessed, and now I'm starting to take more of an interest in The Foo Fighters. Now back in high school I didn't have a CD burner in my house so if I wanted mix CDs, I had to ask others to make one for me. That year I got a few mix CDs and I had some Foo Fighters singles scattered throughout including Everlong, My Hero, Monkey Wrench, Learn to Fly, I'll Stick Around, Breakout and their new single at the time All My Life. For those who remember All My Life was HUGE when it was released in the fall of 2002. MTV played the music video every morning and rock radio was playing it nonstop for months. By the fall of 2002 I had switched from listening to top 40 radio to rock solely so I was hearing The Foo Fighters a lot and again I was thankful because I preferred them over most of the other modern rock bands at the time. This is when I first started saying flippantly "Thank God for the Foo Fighters," but eventually I honestly meant it. My Dad also liked All My Life and along with Collective Soul, that's when we both started sharing a bond over music more than I had when I was mostly top 40 since I was also getting into classic rock bands that he grew up with such as Boston, The Doors and The Rolling Stones. The follow up single Times Like These was another solid Foo Fighters track that I got on a mix CD eventually as well. When I think about that album it really brings me back to my last 2 years in high school when I got my driver's license, started working part time, running for track and my last years of staying fully in the closet. 

Around 2004 is when I decided to actually buy some Foo Fighters albums and I picked up their 1995 self-titled debut and 1997's The Color & The Shape. Of the two albums, it was the self-titled debut that grabbed me the most because of how Grunge it was and how weird it was! For those who don't know, the Foo Fighters' first album is actually a Dave Grohl solo album made up of songs he had written & stockpiled during his tenure with Nirvana. On top of writing all the songs, Dave also plays all the instruments too except for one song with a guest guitarist. Of course, Dave knew that selling his album as a band effort instead of a solo effort would make for better marketing, so he compiled a touring band real quick. Over the years many members have come and gone in the Foo Fighters, but their lineup solidified more or less around the early 2000s. 

Back to the Foo Fighters' debut album, it really does sound like an outlier to all their other albums that came later since it does feel rawer, more idiosyncratic & just plain weird in places. Many fans of the band overlook or forget this album now and that's a shame because it's honestly my favorite album by The Foo Fighters. This is the Foo Fighter album that can most definitely be called Grunge and it's the one album by The Foo Fighters where you can hear the influence of Nirvana and Kurt Cobain on Dave's songwriting and playing. The singles are all perfect and rank among the best singles in all of Grunge, but the deep cuts are also great too. In fact, the deep cut Good Grief is a huge personal favorite of mine. As soon as I heard that song, I loved it and it's been in heavy rotation with me ever since. I love Good Grief so much I simply treat it as another Foo Fighters single and I included it on any playlist that also included other 90s Foo Fighters singles. The debut album also wallows in a sea of distortion on tracks like Alone + Easy Target, X-Static & especially the album closer Exhausted, which sounds like nothing else the band would ever do again, which is why I treasure it like I do. Basically, The Foo Fighters debut album now feels like a lost gem and a private obsession for anyone who discovers it. Plus, for people I knew who don't like the Foo Fighters, I would play the debut album for them and they would be pleasantly surprised by how different it sounded from their rock radio hits that came later. 

 By the time the lead up to The Foo Fighters 5th album was happening in 2005 I had purchased their 3rd and 4th albums and I was now well versed in all things Foo Fighters. I had also just completed my freshman year of college and I was out of the closet and feeling good about life finally. News of a new Foo Fighters album had me excited and I remember driving to work one day and hearing the lead single to In Your Honor for the first time on rock radio. That song turned out to be Best of You and after hearing it I was utterly underwhelmed and disappointed. I found the song to be so non melodic and repetitive to the point of annoyance! It felt like Dave just screamed through the whole song with little else happening to compensate. Now I love a good Dave Grohl scream as much as the next person on songs like Monkey Wrench and All My Life, but those songs also had hooks and a forward sense of momentum that made them sound like some of the best throttle rockers of their time. Best of You just felt like a complete mess to me and a boring one at that. That said, I know that I'm all alone on this because Best of You went on to become one the Foo Fighters biggest and most beloved songs ever. I know that it is a me problem and not anything else, but I've just never liked that song and I don't think I ever will either. 

As a result of being so annoyed with Best of You, I actually didn't buy In Your Honor when it initially came out that summer. It wouldn't be until the release of the second single DOA that I finally picked up In Your Honor over my Christmas break. Unlike Best of You, DOA was top shelf Foo Fighters for me and it's honestly one of their catchiest singles ever. The music video also saw the band return to comedy which was nice. When I finally listened to In Your Honor, I found the ballad half kind of boring and this is where I'll admit that as much as I love the Foo Fighters, they are not as good at straight up ballads the way Alice in Chains or Pearl Jam are. The Foo Fighters are better at either full throttle rock songs like All My Life & I'll Stick Around or soaring pop rock tunes such as Learn to Fly & Times Like These. The first disc though, which had all the rockers, was much better (Barring Best of You of course) and I remember hearing No Way Back for the first time and thinking that it needed to be the third single, which lo and behold it was! 

Whenever I hear No Way Back it reminds me of the summer of 2006 when I was interning with Clear Channel Radio in Rhode Island for that entire summer. I was interning for 3 stations, which included the rock station I listened to all the time 94HJY along with the Oldies Station B101 and the mix station Coast 93. It was a fun internship because I would go to tons of different events including walking through a gay pride parade (my first ever at that time), smashing a car with a sledgehammer for charity and I also had to dress up as Tunes the Turtle, the mascot for Coast 93. There are photos of me dancing around in that ridiculous mascot somewhere and I'm sure they'll resurface when I least suspect it. I just remember hearing No Way Back constantly that summer on 94HJY so it always brings me back to those times whenever I hear it. 

By my senior year of college, The Foo Fighters were set to release their 6th studio album Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. I remember hearing The Pretender premiere on the Alternative Rock station in Rhode Island 95.5 WBRU and unlike Best of You I did like The Pretender. I remember thinking the intro sounded like the intro to Stairway to Heaven, which I have to assume is intentional since Dave is a big Led Zeppelin fan. I remember telling my friend Josh that I had just heard it and it was very good since he had not heard it yet. The Pretender would end up becoming the Foo Fighters biggest rock radio hit ever by that point when it spent a record breaking 18 weeks #1 on the Alternative Rock chart and was declared the most played song of 2007 on that format. It also topped the Mainstream Rock chart for 6 weeks as well for good measure. 

I remember buying Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace the day it came out at Best Buy in the mall and then reviewing it for my college newspaper The Ithacan. I remember giving it a solid 3 out of 4 stars and declaring that The Foo Fighters were now a long-established act who had become an institution for modern rock and I still feel that way. It was around this time that the Foo Fighters became the biggest band in the world, which almost happened by default and it even surprised the band. There were bands that were bigger and more popular than The Foo Fighters in the 90s and 00s, but those bands usually flamed out rather quickly such as Creed or became ignored by the general public eventually such as Puddle of Mudd. Nu Metal and Emo also both came and went by the end of the 00s and yet The Foo Fighters were still here still churning out solid rock albums with solid rock radio singles and that dependability became The Foo Fighters calling card. That kind of dependability in Alternative Rock had become rarer and rarer as the years went on and that helped transform The Foo Fighters from a popular rock band to the biggest rock band in the world. 

Now as I was finishing up my senior year of college, I ended up getting tickets to see the Foo Fighters live at Syracuse University and I got tickets for my friends Jen and Josh as well. That concert was held in the school's gymnasium and it turned out to be one of the wildest shows I've ever attended. The show did start off on the wrong foot though with the opener who was the former lead singer for System of the Down, Serj Tankian, and his new band The Flying C*nts of Chaos. Charming name right, well it fit I guess because not only was the band terrible but it brought out the toxic masculinity in the college bros around us who started moshing violently and my friend Jen ended up getting kicked in the head. Still, we did not let that opening dissuade us and eventually the Foo Fighters did come out and it was around the time Pat Smear had rejoined the band after leaving The Foo Fighters in 1997. Dave was having some throat issues that night, but he soldiered on and The Foo Fighters put on a hell of a show. They played hit after hit including This is a Call, which made me happy since I always appreciate hearing songs off their debut album. The Foo Fighters ended the concert with All My Life and that is when I truly understood the power of that song live, because it was NUTS! I was surprised the gym was still standing afterwards and from that point forward All My Life became one of my favorite songs to hear live. Oh, and to top it all off The Foo Fighters didn't perform Best of You that night so it was a win-win for me. 

After I graduated from college I went back home to Rhode Island and lived with my parents for two years. During that time, I met my future husband Cory and I started working full time with Marriott. Around that time the Foo Fighters put out their Greatest Hits, which I felt was pretty incomplete since it was missing DOA, No Way Back, Stacked Actors and I'll Stick Around to name but a few. The new song at the time was Wheels, which my dad liked but I didn't at first but unlike Best of You, Wheels did eventually grow on me and I like it more now than I did back then. Flash forward to 2011 and I'm now living in Washington DC with my brother and having a long-distance relationship with Cory. I remember going on YouTube to hear the release of The Foo Fighters next single which was Rope. As soon as I heard that opening guitar riff, I thought of the 90s novelty hit Detachable Pennis by King Missile, but I still liked Rope immediately. I really loved the bridge with the guitar solo too and soon enough the local rock station in Washington, DC 101, was playing Rope nonstop and I cranked it up every time it came out. I really loved Rope and it quickly became one of my all-time favorite Foo Fighters songs and it's definitely my favorite song by them from the 2010s. 

I remember picking up The Foo Fighters 7th studio album Wasting Light the day it came out at Best Buy yet again and I started listening to it constantly that year. Wasting Light also became the first Foo Fighters album to go #1, which felt a long time coming and reasserted that The Foo Fighters were now true rock and roll royalty. I ended up getting tickets to see The Foo Fighters in DC with my brother and my dad and I was pumped since the last Foo Fighters concert I had attended had been such a wild show. Unfortunately, it would prove to be one of the most frustrating concerts I had ever attended though it was no fault of The Foo Fighters. The seats we had were behind the stage, which I was OK with, but what I didn't realize is that being behind the stage in this arena the sound was going to be messed up. For you see the acoustics were off since we were behind the stage, which meant there was a slight delay between the vocals and the music itself which meant every song sounded like an absolute mess to the point that it was hard at times to figure out which song they were singing. This was something that happened to me and my family when we saw U2 in a giant arena back in 2009 and it proved to be just as infuriating.

Still, from what I heard the band sounded great, plus they brought out Bob Mould, a queer artist who was the former frontman of Husker Du and Sugar in the 80s and 90s and had contributed to a song off Wasting Light called Dear Rosemary. I predicted that Bob would show up on stage since he's a Washington DC native and I was right. You also better believe that I will be covering Husker Du and Sugar on Gay4Grunge in the future, especially because on top of being a major influence on Grunge and 90s Alternative, Bob Mould is also gay too, so there's a lot to dig into for this blog. 

By 2014, I was now working at the job I'm still at now and I was married to my husband as well. The Foo Fighters were ramping up for another album and this time it was a themed album that was being released in conjunction with an 8-part special on HBO, The album was Sonic Highways and the theme was that each of the 8 songs would be written about the 8 different cities in the U.S. that have a rich history with music in this country. The Foo Fighters would also travel to these cities interviewing many hometown musicians and record the track there as well. I didn't have HBO at the time, but a friend of mine did so when he came over, I was able to watch all 8 parts of the Sonic Highways special. I remember buying the CD the day it came out at Best Buy and it would be the last Foo Fighters CD I bought as well as one of the last handful of CDs I would ever buy. I liked Sonic Highways, but I didn't love it either. The opening two tracks were my favorites with Something from Nothing and Feast & The Famine, but after that the album usually lost my attention. My parents on the other hand loved Sonic Highways and I think this was probably the first time they enjoyed a Foo Fighter album more than I did. 

Once the Foo Fighters announced another tour it was a no-brainer that we were going to see them and it turned out that the first stop on their 2015 U.S. tour was going to be in Washington DC. The show was going to be a celebration of the band's 20th anniversary as well as a showcase of multiple different acts who appeared on Sonic Highways as well. That meant it was going to be an all-day event and the entire family was going to attend it together including my mom, dad, brother and my husband as well as my friend Josh. Unfortunately, my brother had to back out at the last minute due to the fact that he broke up with his girlfriend that weekend. It also turned out to be a pretty rainy day as well, which meant we sat in the damp cold rain for most of the day. On top of that Dave had broken his leg not too long ago, which led to the band cancelling a bunch of European tour dates and this was the first show they were returning to do so we had no idea what kind of state Dave was going to be in. I will say it was fun seeing a lot of the openers and for me the highlights were Joan Jett, LL Cool J and Heart, who all did a great job. I remember LL Cool J saying that he knew he was playing for a crowd that normally doesn't come to see him live, but he wanted to show everyone what an LL Cool J show looks like and it looked pretty great to me. 

Eventually The Foo Fighters did come out and that's when we all found out that Dave had a throne built for him so that he could still play and move around the stage. Despite being confined to this throne, Dave still brought it live and was so much fun. It was honestly very impressive. The Foo Fighters of course ran through many of their biggest hits, but my favorite part of the show was when they did some deep cuts off the self-titled debut that they don't normally play anymore such as For All the Cows and Alone + Easy Target (no Good Grief sadly). I was stoked for this since that first album remains my personal favorite for the Foo Fighters, but besides my friend Josh no one around me seemed to care or even know those songs, which is disappointing but validated my belief that many fans don't even care about that album anymore. These were the same people who later on in the show were singing along to every single word of Best of You while I just sat there politely waiting for that song to end. Oh, and All My Life was still balls to the wall insane even with Dave in a chair the whole time. It really is their best song live. 

Overall, it was a great show despite some shortcomings here and there, but those didn't matter by the end of it. Still, I now look back at this show as my last big hurrah with the band before things really changed. For you see, by the time the band returned with their 2017 album Concrete & Gold, I was now using Spotify premium for all my music and I was no longer buying CDs either. Even if I was still buying CDs, I'm not sure I would have bought Concrete & Gold, because I did not care for the first two singles at all, which were Run and Sky is a Neighborhood. Run tries to go back to the group's earliest days with a frenzied rocker, but it lacks hooks and vocal melodies and just sounds like a lot of shouting to me. Sky is a Neighborhood meanwhile is easily one of the band's most generic and bland singles they've ever put out. At that time, I was still following the modern rock chart playlists on Spotify, but every time those songs came on I skipped them. The only single I liked was the final single The Line, which had a lot more hooks and melodies to draw me in. I did listen to Concrete & Gold a few times on Spotify, but most of it didn't really grab me besides The Line and possibly La Dee Da and those are the only 2 songs I listened to with any regularity afterwards. 

By the time we get to 2021 with the Foo Fighter's latest album Medicine at Midnight, things had changed even more for me as I was now completely invested in the queer music scene and keeping up with the all the songs being released on a weekly basis by queer artist. I was no longer even following the modern rock playlists anymore and there were only a handful of rock bands left that I was still keeping up with by that point such as Royal Blood and Teenage Wrist. The only track that really jumped out and grabbed me on Medicine at Midnight was No Son of Mine and it's probably because that main guitar riff recalls Heart's Barracuda, which I have to think is intentional. Other than that, the album wasn't bad, probably a bit better than Concrete & Gold, but still nowhere near The Foo Fighters best. And yet there was something comforting about The Foo Fighters still being around by that point. Rock's cache keeps plummeting and while there are some good new rock bands, they are playing to a more select audience every year. The Foo Fighters are one of the last big rock bands left that everyone knows so even if their newer music isn't the best, I still liked that they were around. 

The consistency that The Foo Fighters have always had was not only comforting, but it was also easy to take for granted. We all just assumed The Foo Fighters would be around forever, always cutting albums and touring relentlessly across the globe while carrying the flag for rock & roll. Then tragedy struck when the band's drummer Taylor Hawkins died in South America while the Foo Fighters were on tour. It seemingly came out of nowhere, but then the drug overdosing rumors started up rather quickly and just like that another Grunge icon was dead before their time and drugs seemed to be connected. After coming out of Kurt's suicide, Dave Grohl had created another band that seemed to be avoiding the same temptations and pitfalls as most of their Grunge forefathers, but alas the shadow of death still fell upon the Foo Fighters just like it had with most of the Grunge bands. 

It was a reminder that being a Grunge fan means having your heart broken over and over and over again as you slowly watch tragedy befall most of your favorite bands. The difference this time was that the entire music industry mourned Taylor in a way that hadn't been seen since Kurt's own death in 1994. The Foo Fighters had managed to become the biggest rock band in the world and everyone in the industry was touched by Taylor's death in a way they weren't for Layne Staley, Scott Weiland or even Chris Cornell. It once again showed how The Foo Fighters had become such an institution that when one of their members died everyone felt it. It should also be noted that the Foo Fighters were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 while Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden have all yet to be inducted and probably never will be in all honesty. I personally don't agree with those three bands being left out since I think they were all more original, groundbreaking and influential than The Foo Fighters, but The Foo Fighters have become bigger than all three of those groups so I understand why they were inducted.

Of course, after Taylor's death the Foo Fighters cancelled their upcoming tour, but it didn't take long for the Foo Fighters to start putting together tribute shows for Taylor and most of the rock community came out to play and support those shows. The Foo Fighters will inevitably go on, but there's no denying that they will not be the same band they once were. While The Foo Fighters has always been Dave Grohl's band, Taylor had become Dave's right-hand man on and off stage and to not have him in the band will alter the chemistry of The Foo Fighters forever. Still people don't want to see this band go away, because The Foo Fighters are the band most modern rock fans are clinging to right now because there's not much else left. The Foo Fighters are too big to fail, but now like most of their Grunge peers the band will always be touched by tragedy and death and that's unfortunate. Still as these multiple Gay4Grunge articles have shown, when it comes to Grunge darkness & death are always just around the corner.