Foo Fighters released “Learn to Fly” as a commercial single in the United Kingdom on October 18, 1999. The lead single from their third studio album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, emerged from a period when Dave Grohl was reconsidering both his surroundings and how the band made records.
Grohl had returned to Virginia and built a studio in his basement. With guitarist Franz Stahl out of the group, the recording lineup consisted of Grohl, bassist Nate Mendel and drummer Taylor Hawkins, working with producer Adam Kasper. The band had also left Capitol Records, giving them room to make an album before deciding where it would be released.
That freedom extended to the songwriting. In an interview published by Louder, Grohl identified “Learn to Fly” as part of an effort to sustain a song through melody without depending on a sudden surge in volume. He wanted movement between sections to come from the writing itself. “We were more focused on melody and songwriting,” he explained. The challenge was keeping listeners engaged through a relatively steady dynamic, allowing the tune to carry the changes.
The sessions also changed how the three musicians assembled their parts. Speaking to Mix for its January 2000 issue, Grohl explained that he and Hawkins generally worked out guitar and drum arrangements first. Mendel then added bass lines that connected the accents and found space between them. Kasper praised the bassist’s willingness to construct distinctive parts instead of simply following root notes. The relaxed setting still involved careful work on arrangements and on where each instrument entered.
Grohl wanted the performances to retain their imperfections, too. The musicians worked without Pro Tools, accepting small irregularities that gave the playing character. Kasper recalled Grohl experimenting with less screaming and different vocal tones. Although the basement defined the album’s creation, work on “Learn to Fly” also continued at Conway Recording Studios in Los Angeles, where Kasper said additional recording took place.
The song’s subject fit that period of rebuilding. In a 1999 interview with Sway, subsequently quoted by Radio X, Grohl described “Learn to Fly” as a search for inspiration and experiences that made him feel alive. He connected it to learning how to live again after the relationship troubles that had informed the previous album. The song looked toward what might come next.
Director Jesse Peretz gave that search a much more literal setting in the video. Grohl, Hawkins and Mendel played themselves alongside an assortment of passengers and airline personnel, while Jack Black and Kyle Gass appeared as aircraft cleaners. The flight descended into disorder, leaving the musicians to help save it. Grohl’s multiple characters included a flight attendant and an enthusiastic young fan, making the band part of the joke as well as the rescue.
At the 2001 Grammy Awards, “Learn to Fly” won Best Short Form Music Video. There Is Nothing Left to Lose also won Best Rock Album at the same ceremony, giving the group its first Grammy victories.
Another video gave the song a different role in 2015. Rockin’1000 assembled roughly 1,000 musicians in Cesena, Italy, to perform “Learn to Fly” together and ask Foo Fighters to visit their city. Grohl responded, and the band played Cesena that November. Addressing the audience, he explained that watching people organize around their music had moved him to tears. A song recorded by three musicians had become the means for a much larger group to arrange a concert of its own.
