The Colour and the Shape
The Colour and the Shape is the second studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released on May 20, 1997, by Roswell and Capitol Records. It was the first album by the Foo Fighters to be recorded as a full band, as the previous self-titled album was both written and recorded entirely by frontman Dave Grohl. The Colour and the Shape is widely considered a defining album of the post-grunge genre, with its three singles becoming staples of rock-oriented radio in the United States. It was among the highest-selling rock albums of 1997 and 1998, and was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards.
After the debut became an international success, Grohl recruited guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel, and drummer William Goldsmith to form the band's full lineup. The group convened in the fall of 1996 for pre-production on a second album, and brought in Gil Norton as producer to establish a pop sensibility for the tracks. The band strived to create a full-fledged rock record, contrary to music press predictions that it would be another grunge offshoot.
Primarily inspired by Grohl's divorce from photographer Jennifer Youngblood in 1996, The Colour and the Shape is more lyrically introspective and musically developed than the Foo Fighters' debut. The album's track listing was designed to resemble a therapy session, splitting the album between uptempo tracks and ballads to reflect conflicting emotions. Early sessions at the Bear Creek Studio in Washington went poorly and the band discarded most of those recordings. The band regrouped without Goldsmith in early 1997 to record at Hollywood's Grandmaster Recordings studio, with Grohl sitting in on drums instead. Goldsmith was offended and disgruntled that most of his material had been re-recorded, and he left the band shortly thereafter.
The singles "Monkey Wrench", "Everlong", and "My Hero" peaked within the Top 10 of US rock radio charts, and the album charted at number ten on the Billboard 200. The album was also a commercial success on an international level, peaking at number three in the United Kingdom. Critics deemed the album a significant American rock release of its era, and it continues to be viewed as a seminal modern rock album in retrospective assessments. The Colour and the Shape remains the Foo Fighters' biggest seller in the U.S., having sold more than two million copies according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album was remastered and reissued in 2007 with several bonus tracks for its tenth anniversary.
The Colour and the Shape was Foo Fighters' last album to be released and marketed by Capitol Records. After the band, along with their label Roswell Records, signed to RCA Records, its distribution, along with their debut album, has switched to RCA.
Background
The album was the debut of Foo Fighters as a full band. On the first album under the Foo Fighters name, frontman Dave Grohl had performed and recorded all of the parts by himself, with the exception of one guitar part played by Greg Dulli. The band's original lineup assembled for their exhaustive touring schedule throughout 1995 and 1996, during which the band became an international sensation on the strength of singles "This Is a Call", "I'll Stick Around", and "Big Me". Although the music press generally speculated the band's sophomore record would showcase grunge-inspired garage rock, the band's intention was to make a more straightforward rock record. The deal the band struck with Capitol Records afforded them a large degree of creative control over the band's true "debut." The songs on the record were composed during soundchecks during their extensive touring over the previous eighteen months. Mendel said "the germ of every song is Dave's," with the frontman providing a riff and a basic song structure. The band would then jam and each member would contribute to some aspect of the song. However, an early version of “February Stars” was recorded by Grohl in January 1994 when he was still in Nirvana during the sessions that produce their final song, “You Know You’re Right”.Grohl recruited producer Gil Norton to provide additional pop polish to the material. He especially wanted to hear guitar overdubs and harmonies with significant clarity. Grohl said he admired Norton for his earlier work with the Pixies and his ability to "distill a coherent pop song out of all multi-layered weirdness." Norton was highly demanding of the band's performance, prompting bassist Nate Mendel to practice and improve his musical skill. Grohl said "it was frustrating and it was hard and it was long, but at the end of the day you listened back to what you'd done and you understood why you had to do it one million times."
Recording and production
The Colour and the Shape was recorded over the period of two months, primarily at Grandmaster Recorders in Hollywood from January to February 1997. The band spent two weeks in pre-production the previous autumn, rehearsing the tracks and changing arrangements. Norton had his greatest impact during pre-production, during which he spent days with Grohl in his hotel room "stripping the songs back to their absolute basics." His role in production taught the band the importance of self-editing and gave them confidence to see "the larger picture in a song." Afterward, the band set off for Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, Washington, where the first recording sessions for The Colour and the Shape began on November 18, 1996. Mendel described Bear Creek as "a converted barn with a salmon stream running through it". The studio was located on a farm and, for the duration of these sessions, the band lived in a cabin adjacent to the studio.Grohl, who described the sessions at Bear Creek as a "bad experience," decided to scrap nearly all of the recorded tracks. The band took a break for the holidays, during which Grohl returned to Virginia and wrote several new songs. He recorded two of these songs by himself at WGNS Studios in Washington, D.C.: "Walking After You" and an acoustic version of "Everlong".
In February 1997, the band—minus drummer William Goldsmith—relocated to Hollywood's Grandmaster Recorders, which Mendel said was "a small studio that sometimes moonlighted as a porn set, and looked the part." For a period of four weeks, the band re-recorded most of the album with Grohl playing the drum tracks. Grohl's drumming started with only "Monkey Wrench", as Grohl and Norton felt the drums on that song needed more work, but by the end of the sessions recordings of Goldsmith's drumming remained on only two tracks, "Doll" and "Up in Arms". According to Grohl, Goldsmith's drumming had good moments, but his performances mostly did not fit what Grohl had conceived for the drum track, so the frontman decided to redo them himself. Goldsmith even asked if he should go to Los Angeles, but Grohl declined and said he was only performing overdubs. Eventually, Mendel told Goldsmith the situation. Grohl said that he still wanted Goldsmith as a member of the band, despite replacing his tracks, but the disgruntled drummer decided to leave the Foo Fighters instead. Speaking in 2011 about the tension that surrounded Goldsmith's departure, Grohl said, "There were a lot of reasons it didn't work out but there was also a part of me that was like, you know, I don't know if I'm finished playing the drums yet. I wish that I would have handled things differently."
After the move to Los Angeles, the album's budget ballooned and deadlines became a more pressing concern. Studio time was expensive and the group was pressured by Capitol to deliver the record in a timely fashion. However, the pressure never adversely affected the band members, whose main priorities were to make "music for its own sake and let the commercial concerns take care of themselves."
The album's title came from the band's tour manager of the time, who would often spend afternoons rummaging thrift stores and purchasing strange memorabilia; on one occasion, he purchased a bowling pin with red and white stripes, remarking to the band he rather liked "the colour and the shape" of the object. The group found the phrase arbitrary and hilarious and decided to use it as the title rather than trying to choose a title based on the music's themes or moods. They chose the British spelling of "colour" with a "u" as a tribute to Norton, who is British. A title track was written and recorded for The Colour and the Shape during the Bear Creek sessions, but like most of the other songs attempted there, it did not reach the album's final track list. Noted as "rawer, noisier and thrashier" than the rest of the songs on the album by Louder Sounds Paul Brannigan, it later became a b-side to the album's eventual lead single, "Monkey Wrench". After settling on a track sequence, Grohl was struck by the impression that the album's flow from start to finish resembled a therapy session, moving from fear and anxiety at the start to self-assurance and resolve by the end. He even considered placing a therapist's couch on the album cover.