I’ve Been Here Before, But This Time I May Not Get Out!
Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters, has been an amazing drummer and a perennial rock celebrity for more than 30 years. His formative youth – and first efforts at music – were in the early ‘80s right here in Northern Virginia. One of Foo Fighters big hits (perhaps not the biggest) was the 2003 single, Times Like These, appearing on their album One by One. This song has a special meaning to me. I was already well into my middle years when I first heard it, in connection with John Kerry’s 2004 campaign for President. The back story is that it was used without permission in George Bush’s campaign that year – Grohl responded by playing it at Kerry’s campaign events and vociferously supporting Kerry. I found it energizing and morally righteous.
The song is best described as a rock anthem. (Listen here.) Grohl believes it to be fundamentally hopeful, optimistic about an uncertain future – especially for the Foo Fighters band at the time. As its chorus maintains: “It’s times like these you learn to live again/ It’s times like these you give and give again/ … It’s times like these time and time again.”
I feel that spirit in our “times like these” of 2025. They are very trying times, indeed, but for those with the resources, both emotional and financial, and especially the desire to live, give, and love again … it surely will end well! Yet, for those of us who may not have as much of that strong stuff left, it could also be a sad song. That sadness, twenty years after I first heard the song, now consumes me when I listen. Dave Grohl is Northern Virginia’s own (Springfield), but in recent years has been a Hollywood denizen. His first band in high school was the DC Hardcore punk group, Scream. His musical development seems to vaguely parallel my interests – even though I’ve never been a musician. There’s something about this song’s tempo, Grohl’s voice, and the repetitive chorus – perhaps not the most original rock lyrics, but moving, nevertheless. I still rank it as my absolute favorite rock anthem.
Times like these call for more such songs. While the folk-rock genre produced many protest songs over some 60 years, ever since Bob Dylan “went electric,” I’m now drawn to two specific examples as markers (bookends?) for my diminishing relation to the genre. One is very old, from the beginnings of the movement in 1966, Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth (Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound), written by Stephen Stills, and the other is new, 80-year-old Neil Young’s recently released (January, 2025) Big Change, with the band Chrome Hearts. These two songs are standouts along with that Foo Fighters anthem from twenty-odd years ago. It’s worth exploring a liminal connection among the three – at least from my currently depressed perspective.
Buffalo Springfield (led by Stills and Neil Young, in their youth) had been establishing their career, initially as a house band at LA’s Whisky a Go Go, when the November,1966 Sunset Strip riots over curfews and youth empowerment erupted (NOT specifically anti-Vietnam war riots). Stills and Young found themselves deeply affected by the heavy-handed police tactics used to break up the protest. For What It’s Worth was the band’s first submission to a major recording label. It worked! The song, over the subsequent decades, has become the iconic protest rock expression of the “counterculture” era. Everybody has heard it as a soundtrack for some kind of youth protest or another ever since. Today, it can well serve the same role – it’s chorus of, “I think it’s time to stop/Children, what’s that sound?/ Everybody look what’s going down,” is just as symbolic of what a prospective resistance to our current fascist coup might emulate – if only youth were as motivated as they were in the 1960s! It remains to be seen … (If you’re too young to have heard the song, listen here.)
But the notoriety that the song has acquired over the decades, and its association with a singular moment in history, has – I think – obscured the original emotional content of the piece. I can still vaguely remember those days; it was my youth, too! But those memories are fading fast. It was not an anti-war song, per se, although the times and the culture were clearly centered on that senseless imperial war in Vietnam. It was an anthem for our generation, as much as Times Like These might be an anthem for a later generation (as it was even for me, when my sensibility was more in touch with that original ‘60s zeitgeist).
Like me, Neil Young seems to be troubled by the direction he sees the world heading. His recent recording, Big Change, is his latest effort. He still has it! This song may well be the best anthem for 2025. His admonition of, “Big change is coming” and “Coming right where you stood,” ending with “Gotta do what you gotta do/Head to the hills or go to town,” encapsulates how many of us feel today … “Ain’t the worst that you could do/Might be bad, might be good/Big change is coming to you.” (YouTube video here.) All three of these songs have one clear common thread: anxiety about our current state is okay, so long as you pay attention, develop a plan, and participate in your community. If you can do all these things, your prospects will at least improve, if not be assured. That is what passes for optimism in these times. And optimism is better than pessimism!
Chronologically situated in the middle of this trio, Dave Grohl’s masterpiece somehow captures my peculiar orientation best. Its historical moment was, like today’s, an alarm to transcend the dysfunction of the current world (or nation) trapped by authoritarian rule, war, and pivotal elections. It admonishes us to do something! And don’t despair. Seems to me that Grohl may have been drawing on the earlier Stephen Stills song while paving the way for that later Neil Young song. But that’s pure speculation on my part. All three songs are products of different artists, and different historical circumstances — for sure.
But for me, the three do fit one familiar mindset. I’ve been in this mindset before – events (and music) have always had a way of elevating me above the darker moments. Will our current political and economic landscape do the same? Not sure. I’ve been cranking out Warp & Woof posts for eight years now – usually on a biweekly or monthly schedule. Yet, it’s now two months since my last post – too much happening? … Or not enough music?
— William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 