Dave Grohl, like many rock musi­cians, does not come from a clas­si­cal­ly trained back­ground. Instead he has an abil­i­ty to write accord­ing to what sounds good, and where noodling around in the stu­dio can bring great rewards. That’s where The Foo Fight­ers’ best song “Ever­long” orig­i­nates.

In this 2020 clip from Oates Song Fest, Grohl tells the sto­ry of “Ever­long,” and how it came to him in the stu­dio one day in between work­ing on the band’s sec­ond album. It start­ed with a chord.

“I’m not a trained musi­cian, so I don’t know what that chord is,” he says. (The Inter­tubes seem to agree it’s a Dmaj7). At first he thought it was a chord from Son­ic Youth (“Schiz­o­phre­nia,” in fact), one of his favorite bands of all time. So that was a good start. One chord led to anoth­er and soon he had a sketch of a song.

At the time, Grohl was essen­tial­ly home­less after a divorce from his wife, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jen­nifer Young­blood. And the band were at a low ebb as well, not hap­py that their debut album hadn’t tak­en off like they want­ed. But Grohl then fell in love again, this time with Louise Post of the band Veru­ca Salt. Over Christ­mas 1996, he wrote the lyrics. He would tell Ker­rang mag­a­zine in 2006: “That song’s about a girl that I’d fall­en in love with and it was basi­cal­ly about being con­nect­ed to some­one so much, that not only do you love them phys­i­cal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, but when you sing along with them you har­mo­nize per­fect­ly.”

He record­ed a demo of the song, play­ing all the instru­ments (he might not be a *trained* musi­cian, but he is a well round­ed one), and the fin­ished stu­dio ver­sion real­ly didn’t stray too far from the orig­i­nal. Post pro­vid­ed har­monies record­ed down a tele­phone, as she was in Chica­go at the time. (You can hear them iso­lat­ed, along with a lot more gear­head chat on this Pro­duce Like a Pro episode): “I nev­er con­sid­ered doing this acousti­cal­ly, I thought it was a rock song,” Grohl adds. That was until he did the Howard Stern show, ear­ly in the morn­ing at 6 a.m., and per­formed it with just solo gui­tar. “It gave the song a new life,” he said. “It makes the song feel the way I always wish it would.”

The song cat­a­pult­ed the band to the top of the charts, and is con­sid­ered one of the great rock songs of the 1990s. David Let­ter­man con­sid­ers it his favorite song, and asked the band to play it at the close of his final show in 2015. For a very spe­cif­ic lyric writ­ten about a very spe­cif­ic woman, with chords dis­cov­ered while just goof­ing about, it has a uni­ver­sal qual­i­ty.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er 8 Songs by Famous Jew­ish Artists for Hanukkah: Bob Dylan, Beast­ie Boys, Vel­vet Under­ground & More

AI Soft­ware Cre­ates “New” Nir­vana, Jimi Hen­drix, Doors & Amy Wine­house Songs: Hear Tracks from the “Lost Tapes of the 27 Club”

Nir­vana Refus­es to Fake It on Top of the Pops, Gives a Big “Mid­dle Fin­ger” to the Tra­di­tion of Bands Mim­ing on TV (1991)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

The top flight crew of L.A. stu­dio musi­cians known as The Wreck­ing Crew acquired their name, leg­end has it, because they “were wreck­ing the busi­ness for every­one else,” writes Janet Maslin at The New York Times­, mean­ing old­er ses­sion play­ers who couldn’t keep up. Drum­mers like Hal Blaine (“who jus­ti­fi­ably calls him­self ’10 of Your Favorite Drum­mers’ on his Web site”) and gui­tarists like Tom­my Tedesco and Car­ol Kaye could play any­thing put in front of them per­fect­ly, in one take, with the style and per­fect tim­ing that char­ac­ter­ize the absolute best rock, folk, pop, and soul of the 1960s.

With some excep­tions, this group kept a low pro­file and have only become known in sub­se­quent ret­ro­spec­tives that reveal just how much they con­tributed to the music of the era. The answer is: more than any­one sure­ly sus­pect­ed at the time. But “the Wreck­ing Crew was not sup­posed to attract atten­tion. Groups like the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mon­kees and many oth­ers didn’t care to point out why they sound­ed so much bet­ter on records than on the road.”

Not only did mem­bers of the Crew “work mir­a­cles,” play­ing a “first-take, no-glitch ver­sion of ‘The Lit­tle Old Lady From Pasade­na,’” for exam­ple, but in many cas­es, they com­posed icon­ic parts with­out which songs like “The Beat Goes On” or “These Boots Were Made For Walk­ing” would prob­a­bly not have become hits.

“Nine times out of ten the pro­duc­er or arranger would tell us to use the charts as a guide, that’s all,” Blaine remem­bered. “We were encour­aged to go for it, to go beyond what had been writ­ten. We had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate, to be a team of arrangers.”

Though most­ly unknown to lis­ten­ers, the cou­ple dozen or so musi­cians in this group of excep­tion­al per­form­ers did pro­duce two major stars, Leon Rus­sell and Glen Camp­bell, who toured with the Beach Boys in the mid-60s until he became a major super­star with the Jim­my Webb-penned songs “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” and “Wichi­ta Line­man,” both record­ed, of course, with mem­bers of the Crew. They played on jazz records and record­ed icon­ic TV theme songs like The Twi­light Zone, Green Acres, Bonan­za, M*A*S*H*, Bat­man, Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble, and Hawaii Five‑O.

The only female mem­ber of the Crew, Car­ol Kaye, was described as “the great­est bass play­er I’ve ever met,” by no less than Bri­an Wil­son. Report­ed to have played on some­thing like 10,000 ses­sions, she wrote basslines for songs from “Cal­i­for­nia Girls” to the “Theme from Shaft.”

You can learn much more about the once-hid­den work of some of the best stu­dio musi­cians in the coun­try, rivals of the best play­ers in Motown, Mem­phis, and Mus­cle Shoals, in the doc­u­men­tary above direct­ed by Dan­ny Tedesco, son of Wreck­ing Crew gui­tarist Tony Tedesco. Or Kent Hart­man’s book, The Wreck­ing Crew: The Inside Sto­ry of Rock and Rol­l’s Best-Kept Secret.

Lis­ten to a YouTube playlist of clas­sic Wreck­ing Crew tracks here. And see why when you thought you were lis­ten­ing to The Byrds, Beach Boys, Mamas and Papas, Mon­kees and even Simon & Gar­funkel, you were real­ly often lis­ten­ing to the Wreck­ing Crew.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Car­ol Kaye Became the Most Pro­lif­ic Ses­sion Musi­cian in His­to­ry

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

Visu­al­iz­ing the Bass Play­ing Style of Motown’s Icon­ic Bassist James Jamer­son: “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough,” “For Once in My Life” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness