Times Like These (US Version)

About

A few months after release of the UK Video for ‘Times Like These’ the band decided they wanted to make another music video for the song, this time in the United States. Marc Klasfeld was hired as director, a prolific specialistic with hundreds of music videos in his catalogue.

Principal photography took place in one location, the Mojave River Rainbow Bridge in Victorville, California. The bridge was built in 1928 and used to cross the namesake river until 1963 when it was decommissioned from regular use.

The premise for the video saw the band performing on the partially dried riverbed below the bridge whilst strangers walked along the bridge throwing increasingly large items at the band – the first object was a Nintendo Game Boy Advance handheld video console whilst the final object to be dropped was an entire house. Whilst the first few items were thrown for real once things began escalating composite editing was used to mix the two shots together, making it appear that televisions and even cars were landing right next to the band.

The final escalation is a small single story wooden house which is dropped from a large crane directly above the band. The initial shot of the building falling and landing around the band was created as a CGI effect, followed by a real practical effect of the four walls collapsing outwards around them.

Whilst the band were of course entirely safe during production of the video none of the objects are shown to hit the band in the lore of video either. Fans have long speculated the meaning of the video, attempting to link it to the song itself, although none has ever been offered by the band or director.

The video was shown widely in the immediate years after release, but it soon became clear the band did not like the final product, with Dave Grohl going so far as to say in 2007 “I think it’s the worst video we ever made in our lives. It’s lame. It didn’t make any sense”, suggesting that even he did not really understand the director’s vision.

The video was including on the DVD Edition of their 2009 Greatest Hits release and was eventually added to video streaming platforms in late 2025, having been strangely absent up to that point.