Song: "Summer's End"
Artist: Foo Fighters
Album: "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace"
Year: 2007
"Summer's End" is a song that appears to be about longing through a lonely winter, looking forward to the coming summer because the summer is when the vocalist is going to be reunited with someone he is very close with. It seems he's getting through the winter days by hoping for summer to come to be with this person. The Foo Fighters formed as a band back in 1994, their origins being in Seattle, Washington. Back in 1992, Dave Grohl was still entrenched as the drummer for Nirvana, but in his spare time, he would record a bunch of demos, playing all instruments himself. Some of these demos surfaced on a cassette called "Pocketwatch". With the tragic suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, Nirvana would obviously no longer continue on. Grohl had several offers to become the drummer of several bands but he refused, instead focusing more on his own project, now called Foo Fighters. 1995's debut self titled album is basically Dave Grohl by himself. To tour, he recruited ex-Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear as well as bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith of Sunny Day Real Estate, Grohl handling vocals and guitar duties as well. For 1997's "The Colour And The Shape", it was much more a group effort, however, Grohl was not satified with the drum parts and wound up re-recording them himself. Though Grohl would offer Goldsmith a chance to stay on as touring drummer, Goldsmith was clearly not happy and decided to leave the band. The drummer spot would be filled by Taylor Hawkins, who formerly played in Alanis Morrisette's band. Just as a new member entered, yet another member decided to call it quits however, as Pat Smear decided to leave citing exhaustion. He was replaced by Franz Stahl, whom Grohl played with in his pre-Nirvana days in a band called Scream. When recording began for the Foo's next album, 1999's "There Is Nothing Left To Lose", it seemed that Grohl, Mendel and Hawkins were moving in one direction and Stahl was pushing in another. Painfully, Grohl had to decide to kick out his longtime friend and bandmate Stahl in order for the album to move forward. This album would be completed basically as a three piece. When it came time to tour to support the album, the Foo's settled on Chris Shiflett, former No Use For A Name guitarist, to join the band. The recording process for 2002's "One By One" was extremely strenuous and painstaking. The band was probably at it's lowest point internally. The recordings they had worked on for the new album were not good and tensions were mounting almost to the point where the band almost broke up. The guys decided to re-record the tracks at their own studio and it brought total new life to the songs, as well as the band. Grohl had planned on doing a solo acoustic album after "One By One", but the project soon became a full band effort. 2005's "In Your Honor" would basically be two discs, the first one a full rock effort, while the second one would be a stripped down, acoustic set. In 2006, the Foo's would embark on an all acoustic concert tour, featuring strings and keyboards as well. This tour was captured on the 2006 live album "Skin And Bones". The acoustic tour also saw the return of Pat Smear on guitar, making the Foo Fighters a five piece band now. 2007 saw the release of "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace", an album that was nominated for five Grammys. The single "The Pretender" from that album topped the Billboard Modern Rock charts for nineteen weeks. The band's continued rise to the top of the rock and roll mountain culminated with a sold out performance at London's enormous Wembley Stadium. Even Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones joined the Foo's on stage at this show to perform a couple Zep hits. Grohl himself considers this the pinnacle of his musical career. 2009 saw the release of a greatest hits album, including two new tracks, "Wheels" and "Word Forward". For recording their next album, 2011's "Wasting Light", Grohl recruited Butch Vig to produce. Vig also produced the Nirvana classic "Nevermind". The recording was done all in analog and the studio was set up in Grohl's garage. The band also put out a DVD called "Back And Forth". This chronicled the history of the band, the ups and downs and finally, the recording process of the new album, "Wasting Light". For nearly twenty years, the Foo Fighters have become arguably the best rock and roll band of the current era. Their popularity has seemed to increase from album to album. After all these years, they are still very much relevent. They are still the bar which all other bands are measured. Even though they sort of came out of the ashes of Nirvana, you could definitely make an argument that they have surpassed them. Definitely not the initial impact of what Nirvana was, but the Foo's definitely deserve all the respect they get. Just look at the classic songs they put out. "I'll Stick Around", "This Is A Call", "Big Me", "Everlong", "My Hero", "Monkey Wrench", "Learn To Fly", "Stacked Actors", "All My Life", "Times Like These", "Best Of You", "Resolve", "Miracle", "The Pretender", "Let It Die", "Long Road To Ruin", "Walk", "Rope" and "These Days", just to name a few!! Currently, while Grohl is set to tour as the drummer for Queens Of The Stone Age, he has been quoted in January of 2013 as saying that the Foo's have written and recorded some material that will be part of their eight studio album. Stay tuned!!
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