"This Is a Call" is one of the few songs on the Foo Fighters' debut album that does not date from Dave Grohl's days with Nirvana. It was a new song written in the summer of 1994, months after Kurt Cobain's death. Grohl married his long-time girlfriend Jennifer Youngblood and wrote the song while on honeymoon in Ireland, "In that summer of 1994 I'd travelled a lot; I think I wrote 'This Is A Call' in Ireland. When I got back I booked five days in a recording studio, which seemed like an eternity, and I did the whole first Foo Fighters album in five days".

The song debuted at number 12 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and quickly rose to a peak of number 2, held off the top by Alanis Morissette's hit "You Oughta Know". The song also charted at number 5 on the UK Singles Chart.

No music video was made for the song however the band played the song live on the Late Show with David Letterman toward the end of the summer in 1995. It was the band's first national television performance. Since this performance David Letterman has become an avid fan of the band and Foo Fighters have played on the show 11 times.

"This Is a Call" was released as a downloadable content for the Rock Band series of video games on December 23, 2008.

Dave Grohl said about the song: "The chorus says 'This is a call to all my past resignation'. It's just sort of like a little wave to all the people I ever played music with, people I've been friends with, all my relationships, my family. It's a hello, and in a way a thank you."

"'This Is A Call' just seemed like a nice way to open the album, y'know, 'This is a call to all my past resignations...' I felt like I had nothing to lose, and I didn't necessarily want to be the drummer of Nirvana for the rest of my life without Nirvana. I thought I should try something I'd never done before and I'd never stood up in front of a band and been the lead singer, which was fucking horrifying and still is!"

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Wikipedia