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Foo Fighters - In Your Honor
On June 14, 2005, the first "Foo Fighters" double album "In Your Honor" by was released.
This album is a good example of the different perspectives that sometimes occurs between the band and its listeners. More than once in the history of music we became acquainted with albums that in our perception the listeners were great or very bad, but the band members who created them had a different view than ours. We feel that in this album the case is similar.
Well, maybe we exaggerate a bit, but you understand what we mean, no great singles or "immortal" songs came out (still a double album), other than songs like "Best Of You", "DOA", "Free Me", "Another Round", " Over and Out ”, “Razor” did not have great songs... well, well, okay maybe a little, do not resent.
But you still have to admit that it's not a big album, it still contains 21 songs...
We feel there will be no consensus here so let's go ahead and agree that this album is screaming - change -!
And it's different from what the band has done until then.
This album is without a doubt a very complex album, the first part is characterized by a strong, aggressive and powerful rock tracks and the second part is characterized by acoustic rock, soft and touching tracks. There is even a Bosanova-style song. Indeed complex, different, diverse, and unusual,
so the story goes like this...
After 10 years and four albums, Dave Grohl decided he wanted to do something different, something special. He was thinking of a special album for a film and even came up with the idea of recording a solo album, but it was immediately shelved. He carried his bag of songs to the band and decided that together they would decide what to do with all this goodness and how to make it as special as possible.
At first, when the idea for the acoustic album came up Dave vehemently opposed it, because he actually wanted to make a more aggressive album than the band's previous albums. He intended to take the songs to a higher degree of intensity and aggressiveness. But after much discussion, the band members decided to have them both, yes, yes, both sides of the story. One album with hammers and nails and one album with a soft pillow and cotton wool. Dave defined them as, one is the "bottle" and the other the "hangover".
The album recordings also have a story...
We've already learned that Dave has an obsession with studios and consoles (see the entry "Sound City" recorded on a historical console and "Wasting Light" recorded at Dave's home on a special studio he built himself). So this time it was decided to take the "Studio 606", Foo's headquarters, which is in Dave's home in Virginia, and move it to California (by the way, the pillows in Dave's studio were sewn by his mom from Dave's old T-shirts). So out of nine months of working on the album, three and a half months were devoted to the construction of the studio, while in the last month the band members moved to the studio and even helped finish its construction.
On this album Dave was more calculated than the previous album, he and the band worked very hard on each song and recorded at least 3-4 demo versions for each. They spent a lot of time rehearsing each and every song, they sought perfection in each song. Each instrument in each song was recorded several times until everyone was happy, especially Dave of course. Since they wasted so much time during the recordings, in the last weeks of the recordings they decided that no one was leaving the studio. They record from 12:00 noon to 8:00 the next morning and each day finish at least one song (sounds familiar). Indeed, the work on this album was tedious and exhausting and took a lot of energy out of them. The amazing part is that Dave said in one of the interviews, that they had a very hard and stressful time with the acoustic part, it got them back to the beginning when they had to prove their authenticity as artists.
Complicated, we already said...
So Dave decided that for the acoustic album he would include artists from outside the band, in order to strengthen the songs and not create something monotonous and boring.
A considerable battery of artists has been added to the album, with most of them coming from different genres, indeed contributing significantly to the songs and creating additional diversity for the familiar band composition. The most prominent of them were Norah Jones, John Paul Jones, Josh Homme, and a few other talents. Thanks to this, the genres on the album are quite wandering, especially in the acoustic part, and take the band to unknown districts which they cross quite successfully.
The album's story was also complicated for the record company (not that it's poor), but it was hard for it to deal with the fact that Dave decided to sell the double album for a price of one dollar more than the price of a regular album. Dave claimed that the albums complemented themselves into one album and that he did not need more money.
In conclusion, a complex album, not one of the band's most successful in our opinion, but still great, it belongs to one of our rock legends and we love it. It has a number of songs that are repeated by us in rehearsals and were even played on our podcasts.
This is the band's first album that did not win a Grammy and stopped them from completing a consecutive win from the album "The Color and The Shape", but it is worth listening to, especially to the acoustic part that introduces us to another aspect of the band.
Listen to the album on Spotify, Apple Music