“On The Mend” by Foo Fighters

Taylor Hawkins died suddenly and tragically in March, 2022, and his passing may have well been as the result of ODing. The writing of this post is transpiring just a couple of days after his passing, so Taylor’s cause of death has yet to be confirmed. But in the very least, as of preliminary reports, it would definitely appear that drugs played a major role in his health completely failing like that.

Usually when a person actually consumes enough drugs to potentially end his or her own life, that means that they’ve had addiction issues beforehand. And it just so happened that Taylor did OD, to the point of casting himself into a coma for a good two weeks, back in 2001. It is upon that incident that Dave Grohl, the main writer of “On the Mend”, penned this song. 

Considering that ODing is in fact a sensitive and personal topic, Grohl kept that fact, that the subject of this song was inspired by his bandmate, on the low until some years later. Upon discovering it, Hawkins definitely wasn’t enthused.

But who knows? Now in hindsight, perhaps it can be said that it would have been better if Taylor had taken the concern of his friends more seriously. That said, it’s kinda hard to believe that Taylor had no idea this song was based on his experience, as in the first verse the vocalist actually alludes to coming out of coma.

But this is a rock song!

This is a song belonging to the rock genre (i.e. a genre of music where very few lyrics are literal). To some degree, this piece does read more poetic than straightforward. For instance, even the title is more or less a metaphor. But a quick research would also reveal that said metaphor is very simply centered on the concept of recovering from a health issue. All lyrics considered, it can be also gleaned that this is one of the more straightforward rock songs we’ve come across.

For instance with all of that in mind, it becomes more hypothetically apparent that the third verse is speaking to the concept of loved ones coming to visit the vocalist in the hospital.  And comprehensively, even if said subject is “on the mend”, there’s this feeling of doom, especially as relayed in the second verse, permeating throughout, as if whatever issue has cast him into this state has not been fully resolved, even if he is on the road to recovery.  And if understood in that way, maybe it could also be concluded that this song proved to be prophetic in nature.

When was “On the Mend” released?

“On the Mend” is one of the tracks to be had on the Foo Fighters’ album “In Your Honor”. It came out with the rest of that project, courtesy of RCA Records and Roswell Records, on 14 June 2005, not being released as a single on its own. To note this is on the second disc of “In Your Honor”, i.e. the acoustic side of the album.

Writing Credits

The four musicians who were holding down the Foo Fighters’ brand at the time – Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Taylor Hawkins – are given songwriting credit for “On the Mend”. Up until March of 2022, that quartet had the band’s core and remained throughout the years. However, on 25 March 2022, Taylor Hawkins passed away at the age of 50, apparently from a drug overdose.