Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 28 minutes ago
Time to crank the amp up to eleven and play some drop-D tuning. The riff from Everlong lives in my head, rent-free!
Released in August 1997, Everlong was the second single from the Foo Fighter's second studio album, The Colour and the Shape (1997). After recording Monkey Wrench (also in drop-D), Dave Grohl started jamming away at the main riff and the band joined in. He came back to finish up the song months later and the song was the last one to be added to the album, It has become one of the band's best post-Nirvana grunge classics showing the development of the band and of Grohl as a musician (besides writing the song, he played both drums and one of the guitar tracks).
The axe I used for this one is a used Castrol Oil can that was converted to a guitar. I found this in the V&A Market in Cape Town, South Africa. The sustain is unreal, especially at loud volumes.
I also remixed the track to knock out the vocals and produce a Karaoke version, but warning: this song can hurt your throat ... youtu.be/cuHm3uPhhrA
For the whispering part, the left channel is a love letter, the center channel is a technical manual and the right channel is a story that Assistant Producer Ryan Bosch told the band about his dad who worked night shifts and tried to make up his sleep on his one day off:
"So Dad would take the Sundays off,
And that's the only time he could ever get any rest,
And so, because we were loud on Sundays,
He'd make us hold his construction boots over our head, till he'd sleep
And they were really heavy boots
And I'd used to say dad come on please
And like start crying, cause they re too heavy."
For the gearheads, the original used different guitars on each stereo channel and another in the middle, then two more doing overlays (diamonds, etc.). There must be at least five guitar tracks, and a few more some of riff crossovers. It took me ten tracks in my attempt to replicate the sound, but part of that was because I didn't have the right rig ... Dave on the left channel plays a Gibson RD Standard, through a blonde Fender Tone Master, out to a 4x12 Boogie cab, mic'd with both a Nuemann U87 and a Shure SM57 butted up together in and out of phase, while Pat on the right channel played a Hagstrom with Kurt Cobain's live setup of a pre-amp into a Crown 1000-watt power amp out to a Marshall cabinet, then an Astatic JT40 mic was used for the distorted overlay guitars.
Time to crank the amp up to eleven and play some drop-D tuning. The riff from Everlong lives in my head, rent-free!
Released in August 1997, Everlong was the second single from the Foo Fighter's second studio album, The Colour and the Shape (1997). After recording Monkey Wrench (also in drop-D), Dave Grohl started jamming away at the main riff and the band joined in. He came back to finish up the song months later and the song was the last one to be added to the album, It has become one of the band's best post-Nirvana grunge classics showing the development of the band and of Grohl as a musician (besides writing the song, he played both drums and one of the guitar tracks).
The axe I used for this one is a used Castrol Oil can that was converted to a guitar. I found this in the V&A Market in Cape Town, South Africa. The sustain is unreal, especially at loud volumes.
I also remixed the track to knock out the vocals and produce a Karaoke version, but warning: this song can hurt your throat ... youtu.be/cuHm3uPhhrA
For the whispering part, the left channel is a love letter, the center channel is a technical manual and the right channel is a story that Assistant Producer Ryan Bosch told the band about his dad who worked night shifts and tried to make up his sleep on his one day off:
"So Dad would take the Sundays off,
And that's the only time he could ever get any rest,
And so, because we were loud on Sundays,
He'd make us hold his construction boots over our head, till he'd sleep
And they were really heavy boots
And I'd used to say dad come on please
And like start crying, cause they re too heavy."
For the gearheads, the original used different guitars on each stereo channel and another in the middle, then two more doing overlays (diamonds, etc.). There must be at least five guitar tracks, and a few more some of riff crossovers. It took me ten tracks in my attempt to replicate the sound, but part of that was because I didn't have the right rig ... Dave on the left channel plays a Gibson RD Standard, through a blonde Fender Tone Master, out to a 4x12 Boogie cab, mic'd with both a Nuemann U87 and a Shure SM57 butted up together in and out of phase, while Pat on the right channel played a Hagstrom with Kurt Cobain's live setup of a pre-amp into a Crown 1000-watt power amp out to a Marshall cabinet, then an Astatic JT40 mic was used for the distorted overlay guitars.
