2005-2006 In Your Honor Era
68 videos • 858 views • by FooFightersBootlegs This era for the band was the first which detoured from their usual style that people were used to. In Your Honor was a highly ambitious album for the band, with a double album being the choice for number five. The first half is the usual rock type stuff that Foo Fighters are known for and the second half are much softer songs, played acoustically with quite a few musical guests. With the previous popularity of All My Life and Times Like These, the band were already at the top of their career, then they released Best of You, which absolutely exploded. It became the band's biggest song and stays so to this day. The album also featured a few other singles such as DOA and No Way Back, which were played from 2005 to 2008 regularly before ultimately being dropped for the most part. Other than Best of You, the most notable song from the album is Cold Day In The Sun. It was the first song officially released onto an album that wasn't sang by Dave Grohl, instead being written and sang by Taylor Hawkins, with Dave taking the drums instead. Throughout 2005, the band toured as usual playing their typical set, featuring newer material such as Best of You, DOA, No Way Back, The Last Song and title track to the album, In Your Honor. Along with these, the band continue playing older songs, which results in the return of Big Me to the setlist, which hadn't been played since 2001. Cold Day In The Sun was also added the setlist, despite the fact that it appeared on the acoustic half of the album, not the electric side. What I do find really nice about it though is how much it allows Taylor the ability to branch out, with him even playing the guitar during the song. While the performances from this era are definitely great to hear, it's not much to talk about since it's so similar to every album cycle, just with newer songs. What is more interesting though is how the band handled the acoustic half of the album. In the summer of 2006 after touring had finished for the rock side of In Your Honor, the band decided to branch out and play shows completely acoustically, fully missing out songs like All My Life and Learn To Fly, despite the latter having been played acoustically before. The acoustic tour required a new line up from the band however as the instrumentations were much more complex than usual. Four new members, Drew Hester, Pat Smear, Petra Haden and Rami Jaffee, joined the band as touring musicians. The most notable among these are Pat and Rami, with Pat having been in the band all the way back in 1995 when Dave started it, and Rami eventually becoming the official sixth member of Foo Fighters. The setlists for this tour also expanded. While a few usual songs like Big Me, Everlong, Times Like These and Best of You were still performed with a fresh acoustic treatment, the shows mostly focused on the new songs, most notably Friend of a Friend, the only Foo Fighters song that's confirmed to be about Dave's time in Nirvana, originally written in 1990. Another notable song being played on this tour (and subsequent tours) was a newly done version of Marigold, a song released all the way back in 1993 as the b-side on the Nirvana single Heart-Shaped Box. The song wasn't re-recorded for the album like Friend of a Friend was but it was given a fresh coat of pain so to speak. Along with all of these, the band brought back many older songs, such as Walking After You, Next Year, Ain't It The Life, See You and Floaty, which was sang by Petra Haden. The era also featured what was, at the time, the most important show in the band's career, that being headlining at London's Hyde Park. The band play a fairly short show but are joined by guests such as Lemmy Kilmister, Brian May and Roger Taylor. After the acoustic tour came to a stop, the band would never do another full acoustic tour, but during their shows they would have a dedicated acoustic section during the middle, so the influence this era had on the band is very apparent.