Monthly Archives: November 2018

#589: Foo Fighters – I’ll Stick Around

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Recovering from the emotional exhaustion caused by bandmate Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994, Dave Grohl decided to go into the studio and record some songs that he had written and kept on the down low whilst still performing with Nirvana. It took him about a week to do so in October of the same year, recording all the instrumental parts himself (bar one guitar track) and singing every word from the heart.

The debut album by Foo Fighters has always been my favourite of the band’s….. it’s the most raw and possibly impulsive that Dave Grohl has been in the entirety of the group’s active years. He’s admitted that a lot of the lyrics don’t make sense, and his vocals are double-tracked and lathered with effects in some places because he was insecure about his vocal abilities. But that all adds to its charm.

‘I’ll Stick Around’ was the second single released from the album but was the first Foo Fighters track to get the music video treatment (as can be seen above), allowing everyone to see the drummer from Nirvana’s new band. In it, he, Pat Smear (guitar), Nate Mendel (bass) and William Goldsmith (drums) are confronted by a massive 3D HIV virus. The track itself is meant to be a ferocious scathing attack on Cobain’s widow Courtney Love, who Grohl hadn’t felt the greatest of ‘love’ for up to that point. In fact the HIV virus in the video was initially conceived to be a ‘bloated, charred, inflated girl representing Courtney’ before management got in the way.

The track is a powerful one. From its pummeling opening drum roll, it hardly lets up. Even in the “calmer” verses, there’s a sinister tone to the surrounding guitar and menacing groove before it all builds up into the raucous refrains. I can barely make out what Grohl is singing in those verses, though the message of the track is really summed up in its two most clear lines: “I don’t owe you anything” and “I’ll stick around, and learn that all that came from it”. The latter arriving in the song’s cathartic last minute and repeated to oblivion before it comes to a dramatic close. It’s a great tune.

#588: The Beatles – I’ll Follow the Sun

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So it goes that ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’, the fifth track on the Beatles’ second album of 1964 Beatles for Sale, had been one that Paul McCartney had saved up since he was sixteen up to that point. That album was created during a time when the group were constantly touring and barely had any free time to themselves; when they did have that time, it would be used for working and going into the studio and recording more songs. McCartney and Lennon didn’t have as much time to write original material together too, so the former pulled this particular track out to get things moving forward.

‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ sees McCartney writing about the end of one relationship and looking on to the next one with a sense of optimism and wonder, whilst the lady who is left behind doesn’t know what she’s lost until it really hits. It’s a good tune with a great melody as is typical in a lot of McCartney songs. Very mellow with subtle knee-slapping percussion from Ringo Starr and a rhythm guitar in the right channel that has such a smooth tone to it, either played by Harrison or McCartney. In comparison to the ‘shake-it-up-baby-now’ good time music of their previous albums, ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ – and Beatles for Sale as a whole – signified a change in musical style that would only continue to evolve as the group continued to work together.

Here’s Paul playing the song live with his band in 2005, ’cause why not.