During the March 2021 Oates Song Fest to raise awareness and funds for Feeding America, Dave Grohl did an acoustic performance of the best song he's ever written, which is objectively and universally acknowledged to be "Everlong." But before launching into the song, he talks a bit about how it came to be — the moment the riff first came to him, how his lack of formal guitar training counterintuitively helped him find the chord progression, and where he was in his personal life when he started to figure it out.
It's a sweet, simple story, with a lot of serendipity. But it's a neat look into the art of songwriting. I particularly like how Grohl explains the way he approaches the guitar like a drum set. The lower strings are the bass and snare drum, while the higher strings are cymbals, and when it came to "Everlong," he really envisioned the riff like a rhythm. Which makes sense when you think about the song! It's also neat to hear how the recording accidentally came about, and how Howard Stern helped bring it to life.
