Deep Cut Friday: “Hey, Johnny Park!” by Foo Fighters

Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.

“Hey, Johnny Park!” is one of the hookiest, most bombastic songs on 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, an album that’s full of hits and songs that sound like they could have been hits. The title is a non-sequitur that has no apparent relationship to the lyrics (“Everything fades in time, it’s true / Wish that I had another stab at the undercover”), which isn’t uncommon with Foo Fighters songs. As it turned out, though, the title was Dave Grohl’s attempt to reconnect with a friend he grew up with in Springfield, Virginia, in the ’70s and early ’80s.

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“The only reason why it’s called ‘Hey, Johnny Park!’ is because when I was young, my best friend was this kid who lived across the street from me called Johnny Park and we were like brothers from the age of 5 to 12,” Grohl once explained. “I haven’t heard from him since I was about 14 years old and I thought if I named a song after him he might call.”

Given that Facebook wasn’t around in 1997, becoming a world famous rock star and naming a song after someone sounds like one of the better ways to find an old friend at the time. Grohl has never publicly confirmed whether Johnny Park reached out to him, but according to anecdotes from Foo Fighters forums, Grohl has told fans that he did hear from Park after the release of the song. “Hey, Johnny Park!” has remained a staple of Foo Fighters tours over the years, and the band has performed it several times in 2026, including at the Kia Forum in Inglewood in January.

Three more essential Foo Fighters deep cuts:

“X-Static”

Grohl famously played almost every instrument on the Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut. And the only exception is a guitar track on “X-Static” by Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli, who visited Grohl in the studio after they worked together on the soundtrack to the 1994 film Backbeat.

“The Deepest Blues Are Black”

The 2005 double album In Your Honor drew mixed reviews. But I maintain that if you regard the acoustic second half as a pleasant bonus disc, the first half is packed with some great, loud Foo Fighters songs.

“I Should Have Known”

Nevermind producer Butch Vig worked on the 2011 Foo Fighters album Wasting Light, which also featured a brief reunion of Nirvana’s formidable rhythm section with Krist Novoselic playing bass on the ominous “I Should Have Known.”

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.

Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series. “Hey, Johnny Park!” is one of the hookiest, most bombastic songs on 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, an album that’s full of hits and songs that sound like they could have […]Al Shipley{authorlink}https://www.spinmagazine.com/feed/SPINMusic News, Album Reviews, Concert Photos, Videos and Morehttps://static.spinmagazine.com/files/2023/08/cropped-logo-spin-s-340×340.png