15 years ago saw Foo Fighters release their fifth full-length album, an epic double-disc record titled In Your Honour.
It was a bold move by the band, with the album containing two very different sections. Disc one was full of heavy rock, while the second disc contained more mellow and largely acoustic tunes.
It was also the first Foo Fighters album to feature keyboard Rami Jaffee.
Recorded at their newly-built studio in Las Angeles, the record was named after Grohl spent time on the campaign trail with John Kerry during the 2004 US presidential election. That already gave it a contrasting feeling from the start, compared with other records recorded at the Original Studio 606 within Dave Grohl’s basement in Virginia.
“We’d pull in to small towns, and thousand of people would come to be rescued by this man,” Grohl told Rolling Stone in 2005. “It’s not a political record, but what I saw inspired me.”
In Your Honour was also all about redemption, after the band had released One by One in 2002, an album that they admitted had been rushed.
“Four of the songs were good, and the other seven I never played again in my life. We rushed into it, and we rushed out of it,” said Grohl in that same interview.
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It was a big commercial success, topping the charts in five countries including Australia. It saw Foo Fighters nominated for five Grammy Awards, though they failed to win any of those. It was also the second best selling album of 2005 globally.
The first single from the acoustic disc is the deeply personal ‘Still’, written about a kid in Virginia who committed suicide on train tracks that Grohl witnessed when he was just ten years old.
Check out Foo Fighters’ ‘Still’ live in 2006:
The biggest hit from the record was inspirational anthem ‘Best Of You’, the lead single that would go onto be one of their biggest releases of all time.
Funnily enough, the track almost didn’t make the album. “‘Best of You’ is funny because we demoed so many songs for In Your Honor, I’d kind of forgotten about it,” said Grohl, via Loudwire.
Our manager came in and said, ‘What happened to that ‘Best of You’ song?’ So we pulled it out and worked on it a little more.”
Now, 15 years later, Dave Grohl says the band’s next album will “bring everyone’s fucking hearts together”.
Check out ‘Best Of You’ by Foo Fighters:
