A Lemmy-approved explosion
Some songs arrive like a warm breeze through the window. White Limo kicks down the door, grabs you by the throat, and shouts unintelligible things in your ear until you’re either converted or concussed. This isn’t your radio-friendly Foo Fighters. This is Grohl with his foot through the floor, channeling the reckless abandon of Motörhead more than the arena-sized polish of Learn to Fly. It’s brutal, it’s grotesque, and it’s brilliant.
Built like a bar fight in 4/4, White Limo landed in 2011 on Wasting Light, an album recorded analog in Dave Grohl’s garage on tape, no computers, no digital safety nets. Produced by Butch Vig (yes, the same wizard behind Nevermind), the entire record was a love letter to imperfections, but White Limo was the middle finger. It’s the kind of track that makes sound engineers sweat and fans punch the air, equal parts chaos and celebration.
Grohl’s vocals are less “sung” than hurled , ragged and distorted beyond recognition, like a man possessed by the ghost of every dive bar band that ever played too loud. Taylor Hawkins hammers the kit like it owes him money, and the guitars don’t so much riff as erupt. It’s punk filtered through metal, channeled by a bunch of guys who once opened for Sonic Youth and never forgot the smell of sweat and feedback.
And on that note, the careening, Judas Priest-style metal homage ‘White Limo’ is the most singularly badass thing the band has released in the last tenyears.
(Jeff Terich, Treble, 2011)
What makes White Limo so thrilling is the intent. At a time when rock was either auto-tuned into submission or buried beneath indie irony, Foo Fighters dropped a track that felt like a dare. It wasn’t designed for chart supremacy. It was a bloodletting. A reminder that this band, often dismissed as “too safe” by the leather-jacket purists, could still spit teeth when the moment called for it.
The video, featuring Lemmy Kilmister himself joyriding in the titular white limo, was a handshake across generations. Grohl has always worshipped at the altar of volume and velocity, and White Limo was his offering. It’s not their most famous song. It’s not even their most melodic. But it might be their most essential. A three-minute tantrum that proved, even two decades in, Foo Fighters still had venom in the fangs.
