Foo Fighters Revisit 1995 Single “This Is a Call” on Kimmel

Foo Fighters’ week-long Jimmy Kimmel Live residency reached back to 1995 on Tuesday night. The band played “This Is a Call,” the first single from its debut album Foo Fighters, released that year.

The first stretch of the performance builds toward a raging, clap-along instrumental break. Its placement in the residency connected the group’s first release with the work it has made since.

The return to the beginning

Dave Grohl wrote the song in 1994 as a means of breaking away from the past and building something new. He told Kerrang in 2006 that he felt he had nothing to lose. “I didn’t necessarily wanna be the drummer of Nirvana for the rest of my life without Nirvana,” he said.

Grohl had never stood in front of a band as its lead singer. He described the prospect as horrifying when he first tried it, and he said it remained horrifying. The account gives the performance a clear frame: Grohl made a deliberate move away from Nirvana and toward a new life with Foo Fighters.

“This Is a Call” therefore carries more than nostalgia in this set. It identifies the choice that put Grohl at the front of a new group and gives the current residency an origin point.

A family collaboration opens the residency

The residency began on Monday with “Window,” a selection from Your Favorite Toy. Foo Fighters released the record earlier this year as their 12th and latest studio album.

Grohl explained in an extended interview with Kimmel that his daughter Harper was 17 and learning bass. He imagined her coming upstairs to add a simple bass line before they jammed together. “I’m gonna write a song … that she can come upstairs and put a bass line on, like really simple, and then we can jam together,” he said.

The exchange identifies the personal scale of “Window.” Grohl built the song around a bass part his daughter could learn, placing family collaboration inside the band’s writing process before the song reached the Monday performance.

The opening choice established the residency’s method: present a new record through the people around it, then connect that present to the band’s first years. Foo Fighters began with a song Grohl wrote with his daughter in mind. The residency then reached back to the moment that created the group.

Grief, reflection and catharsis

Your Favorite Toy followed 2023’s But Here We Are, Foo Fighters’ first album since the death of their drummer Taylor Hawkins. The chronology places the new record inside a period that Rolling Stone described as a story of fighting through grief and looking forward.

Rolling Stone called Your Favorite Toy the band’s 12th album and the next chapter in that continuing story. Its review contrasted the reflective tone of But Here We Are with the new album’s focus on high-energy garage-rock catharsis. The publication said the latest record favors getting into a room, blasting away and letting the noise serve as a guide.

That contrast shaped the pairing across two consecutive nights. “Window” showed how Grohl’s new work draws his family into the band’s life; “This Is a Call” returned to his decision to seek a different future after Nirvana. Neither performance alone carries that full sequence.

What does this change for the Kimmel audience?

The sequence turns a television residency into a compact history of Foo Fighters. It joins the band’s 1995 beginning, Grohl’s new song for Harper, and the 12th album made after Hawkins’s death. For viewers, the practical change is clear: each performance now supplies context for the other, rather than standing as an isolated pop set.

As the week-long residency continues, Your Favorite Toy must carry the present, while “This Is a Call” supplies the history behind the performance.