For a few years now, Blue Oyster Cult guitarist/keyboardist Richie Castellano has been delighting music fans with a series of one man videos in which he performs such classics as The Beatles’ “The End” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. If you’ve yet to see his clips do so immediately. They are far and away worthy of your time and attention.
Dave Grohl is no stranger to one-man endeavors: he wrote, performed and recorded the self-titled Foo Fighters debut album by his lonesome, of course. (The one exception being Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs playing rhythm guitar on the song “X-Static”.) But that was a record made by a 25 year old rock star trying to find his way back into the world of music after the demise of his massively popular band. This lone gun endeavor, on the other hand, is the fruit of a wildly successful career rocker pushing 50 and availing himself of the ample resources at his disposal to do anything he pleases. So when it’s his turn to do the one man video thing he one ups Castellano and others by having a film crew document his gimmicky performance—Grohl appears as multiple versions of himself, all playing at the same time—of a 23-minute original instrumental in which he even plays instruments we don’t normally associate with the head Foo, such as keyboards, minor percussion, tympani and vibraphone.
“Play” is almost a half hour long and has accountrements of prog rock littered throughout, but no one who’s heard the dude's music will be surprised by this instrumental track. In other words, if latter day Foo Fighters were to channel Pink Floyd, Rush and Yes, this would quite likely be the end result. However, unlike the best work of those acts, there are transitions between the sections on “Play” that are bit clumsy and could’ve benefitted from the logistics of being performed by an ensemble, as Grohl performed each instrument for one complete take and went back to the beginning every time he flubbed a part.
As an exercise in rock star ego he could’ve done considerably worse but “Play” wasn’t meant to reward anyone but Grohl himself. A decent and enjoyable composition, it’s the kind of song you’ll watch on YouTube, marvel at the man’s prodigious talent and inevitably forget not long after.
