"Monkey Wrench" is the lead single from the second Foo Fighters album, The Colour and the Shape. The lyrics chronicle the 1997 disintegration of singer/songwriter Dave Grohl's four-year marriage to Jennifer Youngblood. The song peaked at number 9 on the BillboardMainstream Rock Tracks chart, and at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart.
Composition
"Monkey Wrench" is an up-tempo rock song, written in the key of B major in 4/4 time signature with a tempo of 174 bpm. It is performed with distorted guitars in Drop-D tuning. The song opens with a four bar phrase of a descending guitar line over a chordal riff of B5/F#5/E5 repeated twice. After a single bar of 3/4 time, the main verse enters with vocals and a choppier, palm-muted version of the intro riff. A pre-chorus using an E5 power chord then gives way to a chord-based chorus of B5/G#5/F#5/E5/F#5/E5/C5/B5. 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."
Music video
The music video was directed by the band's lead singer/songwriter, 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.
Other versions
The earliest public performance of the song was during an episode of TFI Friday on May 2, 1997 at the Channel 4 Studios in London. The performance was taped early in the day and later broadcast at 6:30 p.m. The performance was intended to be live but after the band went into a tirade of obscenities during a dress rehearsal that they mistakenly believed to be the actual live broadcast, the producers of TFI Friday decided to pre-record instead.
A version recorded during Episode 4 of Series 9 of Later... with Jools Holland on May 31, 1997 at the BBC Television Centre was released on the DVD Later... with Jools Holland: The First 15 Years.
A live version recorded on February 1, 2000 at the Chapel in Melbourne, Australia was released on the CD2 & Australian versions of the "Breakout" single.
Master recording was playable track in 2009 music video game .
It was a playable track in Nintendo DS version of music video game Band Hero.
Along with the rest of the album, it is downloadable content for Rock Bandmusic video games since November 13, 2008, with the exception of "Everlong", which was featured in Rock Band 2.
It was a mash-up with the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage" for the video game DJ Hero.
It was heard during end credits of an episode of Daria.
The song was upgraded and made available to download on May 19, 2011 for use in the Rock Band 3 music gaming platform in both Basic rhythm, and PRO mode which takes advantage of the use of a real guitar / bass guitar, along with standard MIDI-compatible electronic drum kits / keyboards in addition to up to three-part harmony vocals.
The song is available as DLC for the guitar teaching tool, Rocksmith. Both guitar parts and bass guitar are playable.
