Monkey Wrench (song)
| "Monkey Wrench" | |||||||||||||||
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| Single by Foo Fighters | |||||||||||||||
| from the album The Colour and the Shape | |||||||||||||||
| Released | April 28, 1997 | ||||||||||||||
| Format | CD, CD-R, vinyl (7") | ||||||||||||||
| Recorded | 1997 at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood, California | ||||||||||||||
| Genre | Post-grunge, hard rock | ||||||||||||||
| Length | 3:51 | ||||||||||||||
| Label | Roswell/Capitol | ||||||||||||||
| Writer(s) | Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel and Pat Smear | ||||||||||||||
| Producer(s) | Gil Norton | ||||||||||||||
| Foo Fighters singles chronology | |||||||||||||||
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"Monkey Wrench" is the first single released from the second Foo Fighters album, The Colour and the Shape. The lyrics chronicle the 1997 disintegration of singer/songwriter Dave Grohl's four-year marriage to Jennifer Youngblood. The song peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart.
Monkey Wrench is an up-tempo rock song, written in the key of B major and performed with distorted guitars in Drop-D tuning. The song opens with a descending guitar line over a chordal riff of B5/F#5/E5 for two bars. After a gap, the main verse enters with vocals and a choppier, palm-muted version of the intro riff. A pre-chorus using an E5 power chord then gives way to a chord-based chorus of B5/G#5/F#5/E5/F#5/E5/C5/B5.
The music video was directed by the band's lead singer/songwriter Dave Grohl. In the video, Grohl arrives at his apartment with groceries in hand. He walks into an elevator, as he tries to walk into the door he is stopped by the chain latch and peers in through the peephole. There a doppelganger set of the whole band is shown playing. The rest of the bandmates (save guitarist Pat Smear) walk out of their apartments and join Grohl as he views the band in his room. Smear then peers out of his apartment and is beckoned to join in the view. As the doppelganger band continues with the song Dave and his bandmates try to force their way into Grohl's apartment. As the lyrics go on, the doppel-Dave taunts the band, spitting onto the peephole lens and holding the door shut as he screams "free". When the door is finally opened, the musicians have left, and the first iteration of the band picks up their instruments to finish playing the song. Out in the hall, a third set of bandmates is listening, creating a recursive situation.
When Grohl is in the elevator heading up to his apartment, a muzak version of the Foo Fighters song "Big Me" can be heard.
The music video for the song was the first to feature Taylor Hawkins on drums, although the actual drum track is performed by Grohl.
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Wikipedia