Monkey Wrench is a song by the Foo Fighters, released in April 28, 1997 as the lead single from their second album, The Colour and the Shape. The lyrics chronicle the 1997 disintegration of Dave Grohl‘s four-year marriage to Jennifer Youngblood. Lyrically, Grohl has said that the song is:
“About realising that you are the source of all of the problems in a relationship and you love the other person so much, you want to free them of the problem, which is actually yourself.”
The song peaked at number 9 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart.
The music video was directed by Dave Grohl. In the video, Grohl arrives at his apartment with groceries in hand, but finds the door secured from inside by the chain latch when he tries to open it.
Looking through the peephole, he finds black-clad duplicates of the band members playing the song. The rest of the band soon joins him at the door, peeking in through its mail slot, and eventually start trying to force their way in as the duplicate Grohl taunts them and spits on the peephole.
He holds the door shut against the band’s efforts for a while, but they eventually break in only to find the apartment suddenly empty. They look out the window and see the duplicates fleeing on foot through a courtyard, then close the door and finish the song using the abandoned instruments. As the video ends, a third set of bandmates is listening at the door outside, 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”, performed by The Moog Cookbook, 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.
Tracklist:
- Monkey Wrench
- in Arms (Slow Version)
- The Colour and the Shape
Foo Fighters
Dave Grohl: lead vocals, guitar, drums
Pat Smear: guitar
Nate Mendel: bass
Taylor Hawkins (February 17, 1972 March 25, 2022).
