Walking After You

About

In early 1998 Foo Fighters were asked to submit a song for the soundtrack to the then upcoming X-Files movie and rather than recording a completely new song they elected to re-record ‘Walking After You’, a track first recorded only a year earlier for ‘The Colour And The Shape’. Owing to the troubles surrounding recording the version included on the album was an entirely solo effort by Dave Grohl so the band wanted an opportunity to re-do the song together, including the two new members since the original recording, Taylor Hawkins and Franz Stahl.

This new version of the song was also selected to be a single (Split with a track by Ween, also on the soundtrack) and so a music video was commissioned. Matthew Rolston was selected to direct who had previously worked on music videos for Janet Jackson and Madonna, among others. Initially X-Files star David Duchovny had expressed an interest in working on a video for one of the songs on the soundtrack – “I may be directing a video for the movie. We'll see. Maybe the Foo Fighters. I don't know” Duchovny told MTV News at the time, but it did not come to fruition.

The music video was worlds away from any previous Foo Fighters video, the first obvious difference being that only Dave Grohl from the band featured. Starring alongside him was Spanish actress Arly Jover in chronologically her first acting role, although at the time of recording she had already filmed a role for the 1998 movie Blade, released a couple of months after this video.

This was the first Foo Fighters music video framed with an original intended aspect ratio of 16:9, all previous videos being 4:3. This was presumably due to its inclusion alongside the 16:9 framed movie, as Foo Fighters video reverted to the 4:3 format for several years afterwards.

Dave Grohl was not particularly enthused by the final video, later calling it an “uncomfortable moment” that was “kinda silly” and although he praised Rolston’s cinematography efforts, he believed that conceptually, “It was a little wishy washy”.