1997-1998 The Colour and The Shape Era
111 videos • 2,364 views • by FooFightersBootlegs The Colour and the Shape has become one of Foo Fighters most popular albums, with songs such as Monkey Wrench, My Hero and Everlong propelling it into the spotlight. I've known many people to list it as their personal favourite and while it isn't mine, I can understand why it's chosen so often for that title. Touring for this album started in May of 1997, before the album had been released and so many songs from the album were debuted. My Hero, Enough Space, Up In Arms and My Poor Brain were all songs that appeared on the album but were also songs that were played before the album, with My Hero in particular dating back to July of 1995. However, with the band having recorded a new album, a line up change followed suit. Pat Smear had previously been the lead guitarist in the band for the duration of 1995 and 1996. He recorded with the band in the studio for the album that they'd be promoting, but he has since stated that the endless touring they did for the first album put him off the idea of doing that again and he wanted to leave the band. He agreed to stay with the band for six weeks until Dave could find a replacement for him and he ended up staying for six months. His eventual replacement would be Franz Stahl, a former bandmate of Dave's that Dave had played with in Scream, the band he was part of before he joined Nirvana. Franz would stay with the band for the latter half of 1997 and then for 1998, getting the opportunity to play on The Late Show With David Letterman (twice) and even both the Glastonbury Festival and the Reading Festival. The most notable lineup change however was the drummer. Former drummer William Goldsmith did record in the studio with the band and can be heard on the album during Doll and Up In Arms. He's talked about how demanding Dave was and how many takes Dave had him do of some of the drumming. In the end, Dave ended up re-recording almost all of William's drum tracks for the album. This caused William to leave the band and they were temporarily without a drummer. Taylor Hawkins was a drummer that Dave had met who was playing with Alanis Morissette. According to Taylor, Dave called him at one point asking if he knew any drummers since he didn't think Taylor would be interested as Alanis was a much more popular artist at the time. Taylor was happy to join Foo Fighters and he would be with the band from 1997 all the way until 2022 when he would sadly pass away at the age of just 50. With the band now having two albums worth of songs to choose from, setlists did maintain a bit of a longer structure, around 17-20 songs. Many songs from the first album stayed on the set, such as This Is A Call, Weenie Beenie and For All The Cows and many new songs would appear, Everlong, Monkey Wrench, New Way Home and so on. Strangely enough, despite its popularity nowadays, My Hero was left off the setlists for a while, all the way into 1998, only appearing occasionally despite originating in 1995. Gas Chamber and Down In The Park were initially dropped, though later on in the year Gas Chamber would become a mainstay again. Down In The Park would only be played a few more times before being dropped completely, with the second cover slot now being taken by Requiem. In a bit of an opposite light, Wattershed was a staple of sets during the first album's tour and would be included on a lot of setlists in the former half of 1997 but would go on to be mostly dropped for the rest of the touring. While not touring as extensively as they had for the first album, the band still pulled in a lot of shows for their second album. The Colour and the Shape is now one of their most popular albums having three of their biggest songs and it deserves all the recognition it gets. The touring for this album is a bit of a change to previous years but I'm a huge fan of what's done here. I hope you all like this era of the band as much as I do.