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FOO FIGHTERS RELEASES “THE COLOUR AND THE SHAPE” – MAY 20, 1997 – TIMH

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Whoa Nellie's picture
May 20, 2016 at 7:34am
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Foo Fighters has become one of the most successful rock bands of the post-grunge era. But, there was a time when it was not at all certain that Foo Fighters was even a group. That time was 1997, before the release of The Colour and the Shape, their second and debut album.

The Cover: The Foos album titles and covers are enigmas. They are random inside jokes and references understood only by them. We do know that the band’s tour manager had a habit of browsing thrift shops and buying weird stuff. On one occasion he bought a bowling pin because he liked “the colour and the shape.” As for the album art, it looks like a diagram of a molecule on the cover of a high school chemistry text. Why? Who knows. It has been suggested that the cover art is a take on covers by the Pixies, several of whose albums were produced by TCATS producer Gil Norton. Personally, I don’t see it, and am sticking with “who knows”.

The Basics: TCATS is the Foos second album, but is truly the debut album by the group. Foo Fighters (1995) was basically a solo album by Dave Grohl. He wrote the songs while in Nirvana, and put them on a demo tape that he shopped after that band broke up. Grohl played all of the instruments – Foo Fighters as a group was non-existent. Writing credit on TCATS goes to Grohl, guitarist Pat Smear, and bassist Nate Mendel. The Foos’ original drummer, William Goldsmith, left the band during recording, reportedly upset over Grohl re-recording the drum tracks with himself on the kit. He was replaced by Taylor Hawkins. Smear left the Foos after TCATS was finished, but re-joined the band in 2005.

The Numbers: TCATS peaked at #10 on the Billboard 200 chart, and was #3 in the UK. It is the Foos’ second million selling album, certified Platinum, and the group’s biggest seller to date at over 2 million units. Singles “Monkey Wrench” “Everlong” and “My Hero” were all top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. TCATS was nominated for the Best Rock Album Grammy in 1998. A 10th anniversary re-master with bonus tracks was released in 2007.

Dave Grohl and Jennifer Youngblood

The Contents: The album is intensely personal and informed by the dissolution of Grohl’s marriage to photographer Jennifer Youngblood. The tracklist mirrors the stages of relationship breakup, from initial chaos through resolution and recovery. Befitting the emotional turmoil involved, the songs alternate between ballads and up-tempo rants, and sometimes both in the same song. The album is uniformly strong, and the singles stand out. It’s an album that gets better and better the more you listen to it.

The Recording: TCATS was basically recorded two and a half times. The first recording was in November, 1996, at Bear Creek Studio in Woodville, WA. Bear Creek is essentially a big barn with a salmon stream running through it, attached to a residential cabin. The resulting recording was so bad that most of it was simply scrapped. Over the year-end holidays, Grohl went home to Virginia and wrote some new songs and recorded at a studio in DC. After the first of the year, the band, minus Goldsmith, moved to Grandmasters Recorders in LA and essentially started over. Grandmasters is described as a small studio that looked and sometimes functioned as a porn set. Although he reportedly told Goldsmith he didn’t need to come to LA because they would just be doing overdubs, Grohl re-did Goldsmith's drum tracks himself. Goldsmith quit the group.

Bear Creek Studio

Despite all these ups and downs, and rather like the relationship issues at the heart of the album, at the end of the day all was well. The Colour and the Shape is listed among the “100 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” by the readers and editors of Kerrang magazine. 

 

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