July 25, 2024 • 19 mins
Choosing a song that truly defines the Foo Fighters in the 2000s is somewhat of a Herculean task: Dave Grohl and his Merry Band of Rock Stars have been putting out such consistently solid Rock N Roll since the mid 90s, one might be forgiven for having a hard time choosing just one.
After all, in the 2000s alone there’s the last hurrah of the 90s with the anthemic and sentimental ‘Learn to Fly’.
In 2002/2003 there a dose of heavy and the heartfelt with the back to back smash hits ‘All My Life’ and ‘Times Like These’,
And in the closing years of the aughts we were blessed with the frantic sounds of ‘07’s The Pretender and the smooth ride of 2009’s ‘Wheels’
I’ll forgive you if you want to take a brief pause to take a walk down memory lane and put on some Foo Fighters Artist Radio right now.
But perhaps the track that really gets the blood pumping and the devil horns raised to the sky is 2005’s aptly named ‘Best of You’
This is the story of Foo Fighters' Best of You with newly unearthed audio from the band!
Also contains audio from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCmi_xLoH7Q
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is encore. The stories behind the songs. Here's iHeart Radio's
Myles Galloway.
I've got another confession to make. Choosing a song that
truly defines the Foo Fighters in the two thousands is
somewhat of a herculean task, Dave Groll and his merry
(00:21):
band of rock stars have been putting out such consistently
solid rock and roll since the mid nineties. One might
be forgiven for having a hard time choosing just one
after all in the two thousands alone. There's the last
hurrah of the nineties with the anthemic and sentimental. Learn
to fly in 2002, 2003. There's a dose of heavy
(00:41):
in the heartfelt with the back to back smash hits
all my life and times like these. And in the
closing years of the odds, we were blessed with the
frantic sounds of oh seven's the Pretender and the smooth
ride of 2000 nine's wheels. I'll forgive you if you
want to take a brief
to walk down memory lane and put on some Foo
Fighters Artist radio right now. But perhaps the track that
(01:04):
really gets the blood pumping and the devil horns raised
to the sky is 2000 five's aptly named Best of you.
I'm Miles Galloway. And this is the story of Foo Fighters.
Best of you. Despite its eventual critical and commercial success,
Foo Fighters were very disappointed in the way. Their 2002
(01:25):
album one by one came together.
Girl Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel and Chris Schiffler have all
come out and criticized pretty much every element of the writing,
recording and production process over the years from feeling an
overall lack of inspiration to a disjointed pro tools, reliant
recording process to a lifeless and bloated nearly final record
(01:48):
that they ended up being so apprehensive about, they refused
to release it until they could all come back with
cooler heads to write new songs and try again.
The band was not in a good place and it
was becoming nasty dynamics in the band became so toxic
during this period that by the time Coachella 2002 rolled around. Yes,
(02:08):
they were doing Coachella back then too. Dave Grohl has
gone on record to say that he thought that it
was highly likely that that appearance would be the final
Foo Fighter's performance ever.
The magic of the desert heat must have been good
for the soul. However, as the band thoroughly enjoyed their
performance together and decided to return to the studio after
(02:28):
all for one more kick at the can through hard work,
compromise and reworking and shaking up the production staff one
by one. Finally came together as the band had hoped.
And at the very least they'd found a massive comeback
single in the uber aggressive all my life with Groll
saying years later, we'd already spent
three months and a million dollars on something that we
(02:49):
threw away. The difference between the original all my life
and the album version of all my life was that
this one cost a million dollars and sounded like crap.
While this one we did in my basement for half
an hour and became the biggest song the band ever
had Grammy Awards and platinum records would quickly follow. And
although they still weren't overjoyed with the final product, the
(03:11):
Foo Fighters were back on track.
Here's Chris from the band giving clarity on the situation
because like the, you know, like it's pretty well known
or whatever that we, we made a whole album that
we shelved and then went back and, and, you know,
after a few months of break and, and made the
album that ultimately became one by one and we made
it really fast and the, the first album making of
(03:33):
that first record was a pretty miserable experience. I thought
like it wasn't enjoyable to, to make that record. Um
And then when we went back and redid it,
that wasn't miserable. Oh, that was fun. It was great.
But it was really kind of disconnected. Like we all
recorded basically separately, you know, so this one was different
that we were all here a lot of the time,
(03:53):
you know, and probably most of the time making the record.
So it was just, it was completely
different approach to, to making a record. Now, in 2005,
the Foo Fighters were determined not to make the same
mistakes again. Groll told Rolling Stone, I was kind of
pissed at myself for the last record. Four of the
songs were good and the other seven I never played
again in my life. We rushed into it and we
(04:16):
rushed out of it
for what it's worth. That is mostly true. A quick
scroll of set list dot FM points to the fact
that while all my life and times like these are
still in heavy rotation on the food set list today,
the rest of the songs from one by one quickly
evaporated and haven't been played in over a decade
now, set up in their own personal, if not completely
(04:37):
finished recording studio in California dubbed 606 studio, West Foo
Fighters were ready to shake things up by turning challenges
into opportunities
if the band was having issues making a single album
in the years previous, why not subvert all expectations and
make a double album originally intending on scoring music for
(04:57):
film or releasing some acoustic songs either by himself or
with the Foos. Dave Groll told spin his motto at
the time was who's to say what we should sound
like
by the time an album's worth of softer music was made. However,
Groll told Billboard, I realized I couldn't live without rock
and roll and began to embark on some more traditional
(05:17):
head banging Foo Fighters material as well.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, it might be obnoxious how in love with the
album we are and, uh cos I'm starting to realize
that all we do is talk about how proud we are.
But I mean,
if you think about it, I mean, it's tough when
you have a kid, even if your kid is butt ugly,
you're still gonna love the child to death. Like there's
no question. But when you, when you've, when you've done
something like build this crazy place from the ground up
(05:44):
with you and your friends uh from scratch, just decide
it's time to make the headquarters, it's time to
sort of plant the roots and build the nicest studio
in the San Fernando Valley and then make a double
album and write the most beautiful songs you've ever written
and the most anthemic rock stuff you've ever done,
it's hard to not be really, really excited about it.
(06:06):
And I mean, every album we make, we're proud of,
but there's always a little bit of, of nervousness thinking like, OK, God,
it comes out in a month. God, I wonder what
people are gonna think of it. But this one, it's,
it's really more of this personal achievement where it's like, man,
I can't wait for people to hear this because this
is what,
this is what I've wanted to do for a long time.
(06:27):
And this is what I know, I've always known we
were capable of doing something like the acoustic record
and I've always known we were capable of making the
rock stuff, like, even bigger because you've had moments of
that on every record though. Yeah. This is kind of
something we've been building up to almost in a way. Yeah.
You know,
I don't think we could have done it before this either.
(06:49):
I don't think it would have been right. You know,
Speaker 1 (06:50):
and
proud of their output and not wanting one side of
the band to outshine the other. The double album in
your honor was officially born. 10 songs on the record
were soft and introspective, featuring the likes of Norah Jones
and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and 10 more
songs were hard rocking anthems with more general themes. As
(07:12):
Dave put it sounds simple enough, right?
Well, not exactly double records have a bit of a
stigma in rock music, usually seen as an output of
inflated pretentious passion projects that fans quickly pruned down to
a less bloated collection or skip completely as the guys
told much more music. The band was aware of this
and looked to buck the trend. That was one of
(07:34):
the things when, when I remember when Dave first brought
up at rehearsal that he wanted to make a double
record that he was like, you know, wait, I wanna
make a double record and,
you know, therefore there can't be any filler on it whatsoever. So,
I think that that was definitely on the band's mind, uh,
you know, putting together the final product to, to, to
just try not to have any crap songs on it,
(07:56):
like those other bands, right. Which were just like, we're
not gonna name names. This is, this is great and
we just write the same amount of songs and then
we come up with all this other stuff and call
it a double record. Well, you look at a band, like,
say the class, I was kind of saying that sort
of saying like, well, we thought we'd do it this way.
Therefore the other bands and it was like a,
yeah, it seems like I think a lot of bands like,
like can't self edit, like some people. So a lot
(08:17):
of bands sort of suffer from that thing. Like, we
have to release everything we put out or everything we record.
You know what I mean? If you look at like Sand,
Anisa and, and don't get me wrong. The class is
like my favorite band of all time. But there's a,
you know, they made London calling which is an amazing
double record. You can listen to it, start to, to
back and it's, you know, great all the way through.
But then they went and made Sand an
(08:37):
which is like, three albums and it should have been
uh half, half in all, in all 40 tracks were
recorded for in your honor with Studio 606 West. Literally
being built up around them. The band even helped out
with some of the finishing touches of the construction of
the place, donning their hard hats between sessions to stuff,
(08:57):
some insulation into the walls or hammer down some boards,
you know, construction stuff.
The acoustic record, which we won't go into too much
detail on this episode was pared down from 15 to
10 songs in about two weeks as Groll had already
had much of the record planned out standout song. Friend
of a friend, for example, was written by Groll about
(09:19):
his former Nirvana bandmate, the late great Kurt Cobain. As
far back as 1990 the heavy record was a bit
more of a chore with eight of the 10 songs
being last minute additions to their source material.
The band had gone on record to say that they
worked tirelessly on refining the heavy side, working from noon
to eight in the morning in the final months of
(09:41):
recording sessions calling it the most devastating thing we've ever
done at the time. Speaking with Guitar World Groll recalls
putting his foot down. Everyone has to be here all day.
We need to do one song a day and no
one's leaving until that song is done.
The band was nearing their deadline to the label and
refused to turn anything in less than perfection. They knew
(10:02):
what had happened with one by one and didn't want
a repeat of circumstances,
joking with Kerang Magazine, Dave and the guys put it
this way. We've always wound up recording every one of
our albums at least twice because we fuck it up
the first time. Usually because we're not ready to go
into the studio. So we basically thought we'd make the
new record in our own studio and save a million dollars.
(10:25):
Of course, you'll never know if this isn't the first
version because it's our studio. So we can just pretend
lucky for the foo fighters, the heartbreaking and heavy lead single.
Best of you was not one of their last minute
additions to the album. The song in its earliest form
was actually conceived by Dave Groll in his garage after
(10:46):
coming off the campaign trail in support of democratic presidential
nominee John Kerry. Kerry had been using times like these
with the blessing of the foos on the campaign trail
and Groll,
a staunch Democratic party supporter joined Kerry in a bid
to play some songs and add some star power to
the campaign to finally unseat incumbent George W Bush as
(11:08):
we all know by now, of course, that didn't happen.
And Bush won his second term in office. Groll explained
to MTV that his time with the Kerry campaign inspired
him to open his mind up to writing a song
about Broad themes of adversity. Noting
Best of you is a song of resistance. It's a
song about the refusal to be taken advantage of by
(11:29):
something that's bigger than you or someone you're in love with.
It's the fight in the face of adversity. I didn't
really think of an interesting melody. I just wanted to
scream the whole way through and the first few times
we rehearsed it. I thought there's no way I'll be
able to play this live. There's blood in my throat.
But now it's great. It's a release when you go
out and sing words from the heart, you scream twice
(11:51):
as hard. Perhaps it was that supposed lack of melody
that almost prevented best of you from seeing the light
of day. In an interview with NME, the band admitted
they didn't see much in the song at first until
their manager convinced them. Otherwise,
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I went on the campaign trail with Senator John Kerry
when he was running for president
a long time ago. And I wrote the lyrics after
coming home from that and then we recorded it and
we shelved it. Yeah, we didn't think it was any good.
That was something David done a demo. Pretty much a
(12:27):
music demo, not without words. And then we sat and
we fit fit over the music for a bit and
then did it really early on in the making of
that record
in your honor. And our manager came to listen to
stuff and he was like, where's that song that says
the best of you 100 times just pounded into their head.
(12:48):
And I was like, oh, that really? Is that any?
But yeah, I remember thinking, oh my God. And I
didn't really think
I wasn't really sure if people were gonna like it.
I think maybe the songs that we like the least
are usually the ones people like the
most
Speaker 1 (13:06):
with the backing of their manager. Best of you dropped
on May 30th 2005. Just two weeks before in your
honor would hit shelves in June.
The song would quickly become a platinum and gold selling
number one hit at rock radio in the US and
Canada topping the billboard alternative airplay and mainstream rock charts.
Not only impacting the world of rock music. Best of
(13:27):
you spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart
peaking at a respectable number 18. The highest of any
Foo Fighters song in
band's now nearly 30 year career. The hard rocking song
is not only one that hits you over the head sonically,
but visually as well directed by veteran director Mark Pellington,
who had worked with the likes of Pearl Jam Bruce
(13:49):
Springsteen and Kings of Leon. The bleakness of the music
video was inspired by the death of his wife only
months prior to filming
the iconic 1st 40 plus seconds of the video simply
picture Dave Groh's face in an extreme close up with
a microphone as the song begins almost like a sudden
surprise from there. Band footage atop an abandoned hospital is
(14:11):
spliced with blink and you'll miss it. Clips that are
meant to represent pain, sadness and anger.
The powerful clips include such things as a crying baby,
a nuclear explosion, an angry wolf, a car crash and
graffiti walls which include the phrases help me. Pain, feels
good and they all died in the fire. I started
(14:31):
seriously powerful and bleak. If you've never seen the full video,
stop what you're doing and check it out. I'll wait
here for you.
It was an all doom and gloom with the best
of you music video. However, as just like with Nickel
Back's infamous hit photograph, best of You was given the
meme treatment by some digital mischief makers. The meme paying
(14:52):
homage to the infamous Rick roll trend was started when
a youtuber named You got Dave Grd. Get it uploaded.
What appeared at first to be
the standard Best of you music video in early 2008
with one surreal caveat. As soon as gro begins his
first refrain of his the best, the best, the best
(15:13):
battle cry. He quite simply never stops. The video actually
runs for the same run time as the authentic video,
which means I kid you not. It's just over four
minutes of Dave screaming the best on loop.
Millions of views later, the best transformed itself into various
reloads images and even tech spam for trolls in the know,
(15:35):
there's even a maddening 10 hour version. If that's your thing.
As loving of a tribute as the best meme was.
It actually isn't the wildest tale involving the best of you. Now,
way back in 2007,
a few years after the infamous nipple gate incident that
we covered in our Justin Timberlake episode in season three,
the NFL managed to secure the legendary Princes for their
(15:57):
halftime show. Over 140 million television viewers tuned in to
see just what Prince would come up with as a
storm raged across Miami Florida
beginning with a cover of Queen's We will rock you.
Prince played a medley of his own hits along with
some epic covers of all along the watchtower and Proud
Mary as the rain poured down from above. When suddenly
(16:20):
Prince changed tone soloing into the most brilliant and Prince
version of Best of you before seamlessly transitioning to his
iconic purple rain under the fall of what looked like
literal purple rain
Groll revealed in 2020 on his true story's Instagram account
that while this wasn't a surprise to him, he had
(16:42):
been told a few days earlier by his manager. He
was absolutely bewildered at the thought of it all saying, wait, why,
why on earth would this living phenomenon waste even a
second playing a song I wrote while sitting on the
floor of my garage leaning against an old refrigerator full
of frozen burritos. This makes no sense.
(17:03):
Groll went on to admit he actually missed the performance
live as it didn't fully register as something that could
even be true until strangers started literally approaching him on
the street to talk to him about it. To this day.
Dave Groll lists Prince's cover of the song as his
proudest musical achievement and the greatest compliment of his life
on the
(17:23):
of achievements. Best of you is a bit of a
unicorn for the Foo Fighters because despite its commercial and
cultural success, it was shut out of winning any of
its Grammy nominations, losing out to the likes of U
two for best rock song and best rock performance making
the first time the foos hadn't picked up a Grammy
for their work since 1997.
(17:44):
I hope you're proud of yourself. Bona. Don't worry too
much though. The band quickly snapped their losing streak in
2008 with multiple wins for Oh seven's Echoes, silence, patience
and grace. Now a staple of their headlining stage show.
Best of You has truly become one of the signature
rock songs of the 21st century.
It should come as no surprise that a song with
(18:05):
such a weird and wacky aura made headlines as recently
as late 2023 when a flame, red haired Shania Twain
joined the Foos on stage for an unexpected duet of
the song at their Austin City limits festival performance. I
just can't believe it wasn't the 10 hour meme version
I would have paid to see that. I'm Myles Galloway.
(18:26):
And that was the story of the Foo Fighters. Best
of you on Encore with new episodes every Thursday.
Encore is an iheartradio Canada podcast. Subscribe to this podcast
on iheartradio or wherever you get your podcast. Download the
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(18:47):
dive into the behind the scenes world of your favorite artist,
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This is encore. The stories behind the songs. Here's iHeart Radio's
Myles Galloway.
I've got another confession to make. Choosing a song that
truly defines the Foo Fighters in the two thousands is
somewhat of a herculean task, Dave Groll and his merry
(00:21):
band of rock stars have been putting out such consistently
solid rock and roll since the mid nineties. One might
be forgiven for having a hard time choosing just one
after all in the two thousands alone. There's the last
hurrah of the nineties with the anthemic and sentimental. Learn
to fly in 2002, 2003. There's a dose of heavy
(00:41):
in the heartfelt with the back to back smash hits
all my life and times like these. And in the
closing years of the odds, we were blessed with the
frantic sounds of oh seven's the Pretender and the smooth
ride of 2000 nine's wheels. I'll forgive you if you
want to take a brief
to walk down memory lane and put on some Foo
Fighters Artist radio right now. But perhaps the track that
(01:04):
really gets the blood pumping and the devil horns raised
to the sky is 2000 five's aptly named Best of you.
I'm Miles Galloway. And this is the story of Foo Fighters.
Best of you. Despite its eventual critical and commercial success,
Foo Fighters were very disappointed in the way. Their 2002
(01:25):
album one by one came together.
Girl Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel and Chris Schiffler have all
come out and criticized pretty much every element of the writing,
recording and production process over the years from feeling an
overall lack of inspiration to a disjointed pro tools, reliant
recording process to a lifeless and bloated nearly final record
(01:48):
that they ended up being so apprehensive about, they refused
to release it until they could all come back with
cooler heads to write new songs and try again.
The band was not in a good place and it
was becoming nasty dynamics in the band became so toxic
during this period that by the time Coachella 2002 rolled around. Yes,
(02:08):
they were doing Coachella back then too. Dave Grohl has
gone on record to say that he thought that it
was highly likely that that appearance would be the final
Foo Fighter's performance ever.
The magic of the desert heat must have been good
for the soul. However, as the band thoroughly enjoyed their
performance together and decided to return to the studio after
(02:28):
all for one more kick at the can through hard work,
compromise and reworking and shaking up the production staff one
by one. Finally came together as the band had hoped.
And at the very least they'd found a massive comeback
single in the uber aggressive all my life with Groll
saying years later, we'd already spent
three months and a million dollars on something that we
(02:49):
threw away. The difference between the original all my life
and the album version of all my life was that
this one cost a million dollars and sounded like crap.
While this one we did in my basement for half
an hour and became the biggest song the band ever
had Grammy Awards and platinum records would quickly follow. And
although they still weren't overjoyed with the final product, the
(03:11):
Foo Fighters were back on track.
Here's Chris from the band giving clarity on the situation
because like the, you know, like it's pretty well known
or whatever that we, we made a whole album that
we shelved and then went back and, and, you know,
after a few months of break and, and made the
album that ultimately became one by one and we made
it really fast and the, the first album making of
(03:33):
that first record was a pretty miserable experience. I thought
like it wasn't enjoyable to, to make that record. Um
And then when we went back and redid it,
that wasn't miserable. Oh, that was fun. It was great.
But it was really kind of disconnected. Like we all
recorded basically separately, you know, so this one was different
that we were all here a lot of the time,
(03:53):
you know, and probably most of the time making the record.
So it was just, it was completely
different approach to, to making a record. Now, in 2005,
the Foo Fighters were determined not to make the same
mistakes again. Groll told Rolling Stone, I was kind of
pissed at myself for the last record. Four of the
songs were good and the other seven I never played
again in my life. We rushed into it and we
(04:16):
rushed out of it
for what it's worth. That is mostly true. A quick
scroll of set list dot FM points to the fact
that while all my life and times like these are
still in heavy rotation on the food set list today,
the rest of the songs from one by one quickly
evaporated and haven't been played in over a decade
now, set up in their own personal, if not completely
(04:37):
finished recording studio in California dubbed 606 studio, West Foo
Fighters were ready to shake things up by turning challenges
into opportunities
if the band was having issues making a single album
in the years previous, why not subvert all expectations and
make a double album originally intending on scoring music for
(04:57):
film or releasing some acoustic songs either by himself or
with the Foos. Dave Groll told spin his motto at
the time was who's to say what we should sound
like
by the time an album's worth of softer music was made. However,
Groll told Billboard, I realized I couldn't live without rock
and roll and began to embark on some more traditional
(05:17):
head banging Foo Fighters material as well.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, it might be obnoxious how in love with the
album we are and, uh cos I'm starting to realize
that all we do is talk about how proud we are.
But I mean,
if you think about it, I mean, it's tough when
you have a kid, even if your kid is butt ugly,
you're still gonna love the child to death. Like there's
no question. But when you, when you've, when you've done
something like build this crazy place from the ground up
(05:44):
with you and your friends uh from scratch, just decide
it's time to make the headquarters, it's time to
sort of plant the roots and build the nicest studio
in the San Fernando Valley and then make a double
album and write the most beautiful songs you've ever written
and the most anthemic rock stuff you've ever done,
it's hard to not be really, really excited about it.
(06:06):
And I mean, every album we make, we're proud of,
but there's always a little bit of, of nervousness thinking like, OK, God,
it comes out in a month. God, I wonder what
people are gonna think of it. But this one, it's,
it's really more of this personal achievement where it's like, man,
I can't wait for people to hear this because this
is what,
this is what I've wanted to do for a long time.
(06:27):
And this is what I know, I've always known we
were capable of doing something like the acoustic record
and I've always known we were capable of making the
rock stuff, like, even bigger because you've had moments of
that on every record though. Yeah. This is kind of
something we've been building up to almost in a way. Yeah.
You know,
I don't think we could have done it before this either.
(06:49):
I don't think it would have been right. You know,
Speaker 1 (06:50):
and
proud of their output and not wanting one side of
the band to outshine the other. The double album in
your honor was officially born. 10 songs on the record
were soft and introspective, featuring the likes of Norah Jones
and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and 10 more
songs were hard rocking anthems with more general themes. As
(07:12):
Dave put it sounds simple enough, right?
Well, not exactly double records have a bit of a
stigma in rock music, usually seen as an output of
inflated pretentious passion projects that fans quickly pruned down to
a less bloated collection or skip completely as the guys
told much more music. The band was aware of this
and looked to buck the trend. That was one of
(07:34):
the things when, when I remember when Dave first brought
up at rehearsal that he wanted to make a double
record that he was like, you know, wait, I wanna
make a double record and,
you know, therefore there can't be any filler on it whatsoever. So,
I think that that was definitely on the band's mind, uh,
you know, putting together the final product to, to, to
just try not to have any crap songs on it,
(07:56):
like those other bands, right. Which were just like, we're
not gonna name names. This is, this is great and
we just write the same amount of songs and then
we come up with all this other stuff and call
it a double record. Well, you look at a band, like,
say the class, I was kind of saying that sort
of saying like, well, we thought we'd do it this way.
Therefore the other bands and it was like a,
yeah, it seems like I think a lot of bands like,
like can't self edit, like some people. So a lot
(08:17):
of bands sort of suffer from that thing. Like, we
have to release everything we put out or everything we record.
You know what I mean? If you look at like Sand,
Anisa and, and don't get me wrong. The class is
like my favorite band of all time. But there's a,
you know, they made London calling which is an amazing
double record. You can listen to it, start to, to
back and it's, you know, great all the way through.
But then they went and made Sand an
(08:37):
which is like, three albums and it should have been
uh half, half in all, in all 40 tracks were
recorded for in your honor with Studio 606 West. Literally
being built up around them. The band even helped out
with some of the finishing touches of the construction of
the place, donning their hard hats between sessions to stuff,
(08:57):
some insulation into the walls or hammer down some boards,
you know, construction stuff.
The acoustic record, which we won't go into too much
detail on this episode was pared down from 15 to
10 songs in about two weeks as Groll had already
had much of the record planned out standout song. Friend
of a friend, for example, was written by Groll about
(09:19):
his former Nirvana bandmate, the late great Kurt Cobain. As
far back as 1990 the heavy record was a bit
more of a chore with eight of the 10 songs
being last minute additions to their source material.
The band had gone on record to say that they
worked tirelessly on refining the heavy side, working from noon
to eight in the morning in the final months of
(09:41):
recording sessions calling it the most devastating thing we've ever
done at the time. Speaking with Guitar World Groll recalls
putting his foot down. Everyone has to be here all day.
We need to do one song a day and no
one's leaving until that song is done.
The band was nearing their deadline to the label and
refused to turn anything in less than perfection. They knew
(10:02):
what had happened with one by one and didn't want
a repeat of circumstances,
joking with Kerang Magazine, Dave and the guys put it
this way. We've always wound up recording every one of
our albums at least twice because we fuck it up
the first time. Usually because we're not ready to go
into the studio. So we basically thought we'd make the
new record in our own studio and save a million dollars.
(10:25):
Of course, you'll never know if this isn't the first
version because it's our studio. So we can just pretend
lucky for the foo fighters, the heartbreaking and heavy lead single.
Best of you was not one of their last minute
additions to the album. The song in its earliest form
was actually conceived by Dave Groll in his garage after
(10:46):
coming off the campaign trail in support of democratic presidential
nominee John Kerry. Kerry had been using times like these
with the blessing of the foos on the campaign trail
and Groll,
a staunch Democratic party supporter joined Kerry in a bid
to play some songs and add some star power to
the campaign to finally unseat incumbent George W Bush as
(11:08):
we all know by now, of course, that didn't happen.
And Bush won his second term in office. Groll explained
to MTV that his time with the Kerry campaign inspired
him to open his mind up to writing a song
about Broad themes of adversity. Noting
Best of you is a song of resistance. It's a
song about the refusal to be taken advantage of by
(11:29):
something that's bigger than you or someone you're in love with.
It's the fight in the face of adversity. I didn't
really think of an interesting melody. I just wanted to
scream the whole way through and the first few times
we rehearsed it. I thought there's no way I'll be
able to play this live. There's blood in my throat.
But now it's great. It's a release when you go
out and sing words from the heart, you scream twice
(11:51):
as hard. Perhaps it was that supposed lack of melody
that almost prevented best of you from seeing the light
of day. In an interview with NME, the band admitted
they didn't see much in the song at first until
their manager convinced them. Otherwise,
Speaker 2 (12:04):
I went on the campaign trail with Senator John Kerry
when he was running for president
a long time ago. And I wrote the lyrics after
coming home from that and then we recorded it and
we shelved it. Yeah, we didn't think it was any good.
That was something David done a demo. Pretty much a
(12:27):
music demo, not without words. And then we sat and
we fit fit over the music for a bit and
then did it really early on in the making of
that record
in your honor. And our manager came to listen to
stuff and he was like, where's that song that says
the best of you 100 times just pounded into their head.
(12:48):
And I was like, oh, that really? Is that any?
But yeah, I remember thinking, oh my God. And I
didn't really think
I wasn't really sure if people were gonna like it.
I think maybe the songs that we like the least
are usually the ones people like the
most
Speaker 1 (13:06):
with the backing of their manager. Best of you dropped
on May 30th 2005. Just two weeks before in your
honor would hit shelves in June.
The song would quickly become a platinum and gold selling
number one hit at rock radio in the US and
Canada topping the billboard alternative airplay and mainstream rock charts.
Not only impacting the world of rock music. Best of
(13:27):
you spent 21 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart
peaking at a respectable number 18. The highest of any
Foo Fighters song in
band's now nearly 30 year career. The hard rocking song
is not only one that hits you over the head sonically,
but visually as well directed by veteran director Mark Pellington,
who had worked with the likes of Pearl Jam Bruce
(13:49):
Springsteen and Kings of Leon. The bleakness of the music
video was inspired by the death of his wife only
months prior to filming
the iconic 1st 40 plus seconds of the video simply
picture Dave Groh's face in an extreme close up with
a microphone as the song begins almost like a sudden
surprise from there. Band footage atop an abandoned hospital is
(14:11):
spliced with blink and you'll miss it. Clips that are
meant to represent pain, sadness and anger.
The powerful clips include such things as a crying baby,
a nuclear explosion, an angry wolf, a car crash and
graffiti walls which include the phrases help me. Pain, feels
good and they all died in the fire. I started
(14:31):
seriously powerful and bleak. If you've never seen the full video,
stop what you're doing and check it out. I'll wait
here for you.
It was an all doom and gloom with the best
of you music video. However, as just like with Nickel
Back's infamous hit photograph, best of You was given the
meme treatment by some digital mischief makers. The meme paying
(14:52):
homage to the infamous Rick roll trend was started when
a youtuber named You got Dave Grd. Get it uploaded.
What appeared at first to be
the standard Best of you music video in early 2008
with one surreal caveat. As soon as gro begins his
first refrain of his the best, the best, the best
(15:13):
battle cry. He quite simply never stops. The video actually
runs for the same run time as the authentic video,
which means I kid you not. It's just over four
minutes of Dave screaming the best on loop.
Millions of views later, the best transformed itself into various
reloads images and even tech spam for trolls in the know,
(15:35):
there's even a maddening 10 hour version. If that's your thing.
As loving of a tribute as the best meme was.
It actually isn't the wildest tale involving the best of you. Now,
way back in 2007,
a few years after the infamous nipple gate incident that
we covered in our Justin Timberlake episode in season three,
the NFL managed to secure the legendary Princes for their
(15:57):
halftime show. Over 140 million television viewers tuned in to
see just what Prince would come up with as a
storm raged across Miami Florida
beginning with a cover of Queen's We will rock you.
Prince played a medley of his own hits along with
some epic covers of all along the watchtower and Proud
Mary as the rain poured down from above. When suddenly
(16:20):
Prince changed tone soloing into the most brilliant and Prince
version of Best of you before seamlessly transitioning to his
iconic purple rain under the fall of what looked like
literal purple rain
Groll revealed in 2020 on his true story's Instagram account
that while this wasn't a surprise to him, he had
(16:42):
been told a few days earlier by his manager. He
was absolutely bewildered at the thought of it all saying, wait, why,
why on earth would this living phenomenon waste even a
second playing a song I wrote while sitting on the
floor of my garage leaning against an old refrigerator full
of frozen burritos. This makes no sense.
(17:03):
Groll went on to admit he actually missed the performance
live as it didn't fully register as something that could
even be true until strangers started literally approaching him on
the street to talk to him about it. To this day.
Dave Groll lists Prince's cover of the song as his
proudest musical achievement and the greatest compliment of his life
on the
(17:23):
of achievements. Best of you is a bit of a
unicorn for the Foo Fighters because despite its commercial and
cultural success, it was shut out of winning any of
its Grammy nominations, losing out to the likes of U
two for best rock song and best rock performance making
the first time the foos hadn't picked up a Grammy
for their work since 1997.
(17:44):
I hope you're proud of yourself. Bona. Don't worry too
much though. The band quickly snapped their losing streak in
2008 with multiple wins for Oh seven's Echoes, silence, patience
and grace. Now a staple of their headlining stage show.
Best of You has truly become one of the signature
rock songs of the 21st century.
It should come as no surprise that a song with
(18:05):
such a weird and wacky aura made headlines as recently
as late 2023 when a flame, red haired Shania Twain
joined the Foos on stage for an unexpected duet of
the song at their Austin City limits festival performance. I
just can't believe it wasn't the 10 hour meme version
I would have paid to see that. I'm Myles Galloway.
(18:26):
And that was the story of the Foo Fighters. Best
of you on Encore with new episodes every Thursday.
Encore is an iheartradio Canada podcast. Subscribe to this podcast
on iheartradio or wherever you get your podcast. Download the
iheartradio app for more great podcasts. Just like these
(18:47):
dive into the behind the scenes world of your favorite artist,
interviews with us. Shannon Burns, producer Jess and the entire
iheartradio team on the filter podcast. Grab your headphones, new
episodes land every week wherever you get your podcasts.
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