Welcome back to the deep dive. Today we are we're
unpacking the career of a man who has become
a sort of ubiquitous cultural furniture. It's
a great way to put it. Cultural furniture. You
know, you turn on the radio. He's there. You
watch a documentary about the history of a recording
studio and oh, he's directing it. You check the
credits of a Muppets movie and somehow he's the
guy playing drums on a track. He's everywhere.
We are talking, of course, about Dave Grohl.
It is genuinely, I mean, it's almost impossible
to navigate the landscape of the last. 30, maybe
even 40 years of rock music without tripping
over Dave Grohl. He's like the connective tissue
for an entire era. But that's the thing. He's
so present that I think we almost take him for
granted. You know, we see the nice guy smile,
the coffee commercials, the viral moments, and
we forget just how improbable his actual career
path is. Absolutely. Because usually when we
do these deep dives, we're looking at a specific
event or a breakthrough. Today, the mission is
to look at a statistical anomaly. That is the
perfect way to frame it. Statistically, Dave
Grohl's career should not exist. OK, so let's
unpack that a bit. He was the drummer for Nirvana,
arguably the defining band of the 1990s. Full
stop. No argument there. When that ended in the
most horrific way possible, the standard script
for a drummer in that position is to, well, to
fade away. Maybe you join another band as a drummer.
Maybe you do the convention circuit. You become
a session guy. A footnote. Exactly. You certainly
don't step out from behind the kit, pick up a
guitar, which, by the way, nobody really knew
you could play, and then front a band that becomes
an arena -filling monster for the next three
decades. It's the drummer curse. It really is.
In the history of rock, the list of drummers
who successfully transitioned to being the primary
songwriter and frontman of the globally massive
act is incredibly short. Who's on it? You've
got Phil Collins, obviously. Right. maybe don
henley from the eagles okay and you have dave
grohl that's pretty much the list and that second
act is what we really want to dissect today because
there is this public narrative of grohl as the
nicest guy in rock and it's a great brand don't
get me wrong it's a fantastic brand but when
i was reading through the source material for
this the biographies the studio logs the timelines
I started to get a different vibe, a very different
vibe. I saw a guy who is incredibly calculated,
relentlessly driven, and frankly, a bit ruthless
when it comes to his vision. You don't get to
headline Wembley Stadium twice with two completely
different fans just by being a nice guy who tips
well. Right. You get there by being an absolute
perfectionist. So our goal today is to sort of
peel back that cool dad persona and look at the
engine underneath. We need to reconcile the guy
who cooks. barbecue for 500 homeless people with
the guy who will, without telling him, erase
his own bandmates tracks if they aren't perfect.
That's the core of it. So let's rewind the tape.
We need to go back to the beginning to understand
where this drive, this ambition comes from. He's
synonymous with Seattle now and maybe D .C.,
but he actually started in the Midwest, right?
Yeah, born and born in Ohio in 1969. But the
setting for the story, it really shifts to Springfield,
Virginia, pretty early on in his life. His parents
divorced when he was seven, and he was raised
primarily by his mother, Virginia Grohl. And
that divorce detail, it seems really important.
In the reading, it felt like it created this
very tight, almost us against the world dynamic
between him and his mom. It absolutely did. His
mother was a public school teacher, very open
minded, and she really became the bedrock of
his confidence. But if we are looking for the
musical patient zero moment, the spark. It didn't
happen in Virginia. It happened in Evanston,
Illinois. Ah, the cousin story. Cousin Tracy.
This is 1982. Dave is 13 years old. He goes to
visit his cousin Tracy for the summer. Now, you
have to picture this. Up until this point, Dave
is a classic rock kid. He likes, you know, whatever's
on the radio. But Tracy is different. She's punk.
And she takes him to a show. A real show. She
takes him to a club called the Cubby Bear in
Chicago, right across from Wrigley Field, to
see a band called Naked Raygun. Naked Raygun.
That is a name that just sounds like it belongs
on a dive bar bathroom wall. Which is exactly
the vibe. You have to imagine this from his perspective.
He's 13. He walks into this club. It's dark.
It smells like stale beer and sweat. People are
slamming into each other in a mosh pit. It is
visceral. And the band on stage, they aren't
playing perfect scales. They aren't prog rock
heroes. They are just loud and fast and aggressive.
And for a lot of kids, that would be terrifying.
But for Grohl, it was... What, an invitation?
It was the aha moment, the light bulb. He realized
that the barrier to entry he always imagined
was gone. He looked at them and thought, I don't
need to be a virtuoso. I don't need to study
music theory for 10 years. I just need to mean
it. It made music feel accessible. So he goes
home to Virginia. He's got the punk bug. He wants
to play drums. But there's a logistical problem,
a big one. He doesn't have any drums, zero drums,
not even a snare. They lived in a small house.
They didn't have the money or, frankly, the space
for a full kit. So explain this to me, because
this is the part I find fascinating. He becomes
one of the hardest hitting, most powerful drummers
in rock history. How do you develop that skill
without the actual instrument? He improvised.
He built a kit in his bedroom using his furniture.
He set up a designated pillow for a snare drum.
a bedpost for a ride cymbal, a chair for a tom
-tom. And he sat there with these thick, heavy
marching band sticks. Wait, marching band sticks?
Yeah, much heavier and thicker than what you'd
use for a standard rock kit. And he just played
along to records for hours and hours. Okay, that's
a fun image, the kid beating up his pillows.
But from a technical standpoint, does that actually
translate? Does hitting a pillow really teach
you how to hit a drum? It teaches you something
very specific, and this is absolutely crucial
to what we now call the Dave Grohl sound. Think
about the physics of it. When you hit a real
drum skin with a stick, what happens? It bounces
back. You get rebound. Exactly. The drum does
half the work for you. It pushes the stick back
up, which allows you to play fast, to do rolls
with less physical effort. Now, hit a pillar.
What happens? Nothing. It just thuds. It absorbs
all the energy. There's zero rebound. Zero. So
to get the stick back up for the very next hit,
you have to physically pull it up with your own
muscle. You are doing all the work every single
time. So it's basically resistance training for
drumming? It is intense resistance training for
his wrists and forearms. He did this for hours
a day for years. He was building these fast twitch
muscle fibers that were designed to fight a dead
surface. So when he finally sits down at a real
drum kit... He nearly puts the stick through
the drum head. He is so used to fighting the
pillow that when he hits a surface that actually
gives energy back to him, the power is just,
it's explosive. That cannon fire snare sound
you hear on Nevermind, that isn't just studio
magic or a producer's trick. That is the sound
of a guy who learned to play by beating a mattress
into submission. That makes so much sense. It
explains why he looks like he's trying to murder
the kit every time he plays. He's an incredibly
physical player. Right. But we have to layer
something else on top of that. Yeah. It wasn't
just brute force he was developing. He was listening
to very specific records while he did this. Right.
Because he wasn't just listening to punk. He
was a massive Rush fan. 2112 by Rush. Which is
pretty much the musical opposite of punk rock.
It's mathematical. It's complex, high concept,
progressive rock. It is. But he discovered 2112
when he was about eight years old. And he said
it just rewired his brain. He idolized Neil Peart.
the drummer for Rush, who is famously known as
The Professor. So you have this fascinating duality
developing in his teenage brain. You do. On one
side, he wants the raw, dirty, emotional energy
of bad brains and the DC punk scene. On the other
side, he wants the technical precision of Neil
Peart and the heavy, deep groove of John Bonham
from Led Zeppelin. He's got a Bonham tattoo,
right? He did. The three -ring symbol on his
wrist. So he's sitting in his bedroom trying
to execute rush -level complexity with punk rock
ferocity. While hitting pillows. While hitting
pillows. That is the recipe for Dave Grohl. So
let's talk about the hustle part of this origin
story. Because he's not just sitting in his room
dreaming. He's actively trying to get out there.
And let's just say he's creative with the truth
sometimes. He was a total hustler. In high school
at Thomas Jefferson High, he was actually voted
class vice president. Oh, wait. Yes. And he used
that role to play snippets of the circle jerks
and bad brains over the school's PA system during
morning announcements. Just force -feeding hardcore
punk to the entire suburban student body at 8
a .m. He couldn't help himself. He just needed
to share the noise. But his academics were, they
were tanking. Too much cannabis, too much drumming.
He bounced around a couple of different schools.
And eventually he sees an ad for a band called
Scream. Now Scream wasn't a high school band.
They were a legitimate D .C. hardcore act. They
toured. They had albums out. They were the real
deal in the D .C. scene. A very respected band.
And they needed a drummer. Grohl is 17 years
old. He calls them up to set up an audition.
But he doesn't tell them he's 17. Of course not.
He lies and says he's 20. He knew that if he
said he was a junior in high school, they wouldn't
even let him in the room. So he walks in, destroys
the audition with that pillow power drumming,
and gets the gig. And this leads to the first
major fork in the road moment of his life. He
gets the job, but the job means touring Europe.
He can't do that and finish high school. He has
to drop out. And this is where we really see
that risk tolerance, that all or nothing drive.
Most kids, or at least their parents, would say,
look, finish your diploma, then go play music.
Grohl's quote on this is perfect. He said, I
was 17 and extremely anxious to see the world,
so I did it. He dropped out in his junior year.
And his mom let him. Virginia Grohl is the unsung
hero of this entire story. I really believe that.
She saw that this wasn't just a phase for him.
She saw he had a vocation. So she let him go.
He got in a van with a bunch of older guys and
spent the next four years basically starving.
We should clarify what starting means in this
context. This was not the glamorous tour bus
life. Oh, God, no. This was sleeping on floors
in squats in Italy life. This was eating corn
dogs from gas stations for every meal life. But
this was his conservatory. This is where he learned
how to manage a crowd, how to play through sheer
exhaustion, how to keep a band together when
everyone smells terrible and is hungry and broke.
But all good things, even starving in a van,
come to an end. Scream implodes in 1990, the
bassist quits mid -tour, and Grohl is stranded
in Los Angeles. He's 21, he's broke, and he's
stuck. And this is where the network kicks in.
It's all about who you know. Buzz Osborne, the
singer for the Melvins, a hugely influential
sludge metal band. He knows Dave. And he also
knows a couple of guys up in Seattle who are,
coincidentally, looking for a drummer. Kurt Cobain
and Chris Novoselic. Nirvana. At this point,
Nirvana had released their first album, Bleach.
It was cool. It was underground. But they were
burning through drummers. They wanted someone
who hit harder. Buzz connects the dots. He gives
Chris Dave's phone number. Now, Dave had seen
Nirvana before this, hadn't he? He had seen them
on a record cover first. And his description
of them is just perfect. He said they look like
psycho lumberjacks. Which, if you look at the
photos from 1989 and 1990, is 100 % accurate.
Flannel shirts, unwashed hair, just staring blankly
at the camera. And then he saw them live. And
he was really confused by the visual. He said,
what, that little dude and that big motherfucker,
you're kidding me? He's talking about Kurt. who
was slight and small, and Christ, who was this
towering six foot seven giant. It looked like
a total mismatch. But he gets the invitation
to audition. He flies up to Seattle. And again,
we see the reality of the situation, the poverty.
He moves into Kurt Cobain's apartment in Olympia,
Washington. And apartment is a very generous
word. It was a tiny, squalid space. Grohl talks
about living on corn dogs and dealing with these
turtle tanks that Kurt had everywhere. It was
grim. These were not guys living like rock stars.
But they go into a room to play, and this is
the moment. This is where everything changes.
It was instant combustion. Grohl said they played,
and within 30 seconds, they just knew. Kurt and
Kreest had a very unique rhythm. It was kind
of sludgy, kind of behind the beat. Grohl came
in with that pillow training power and that punk
precision, and he tightened the whole thing up.
He was the engine that the car had been missing.
He joins in September of 1990. They go into the
studio to record Nevermind in May of 1991. I
mean, talk about timing. He jumps on the train
right before it goes supersonic. We don't need
to re -litigate the success of Nevermind. It
changed the world. But I want to focus on Dave's
role inside the band, because obviously he's
the drummer. Kurt is the visionary, the songwriter.
But Dave was writing, wasn't he? He was, but
he was doing it in the shadows. He was very,
very aware of the dynamic. Nirvana was Kurt's
vision. You don't walk into a room with a generational
songwriting genius and say, hey, guys, check
out my old pop song. So Dave kept his head down.
But he recorded a cassette tape. the pocket watch
cassette he released it in 1992 under the pseudonym
late with an exclamation point at the end and
if you go back and listen to that tape today
it is shocking you can hear the blueprint for
the first foo fighters album it wasn't like he
suddenly learned to write these melodic rock
songs in 1995 he was writing them in 1990 and
1991. did kurt know about this did he know dave
was writing these songs he did and this is a
really touching and kind of tragic detail Kurt
heard a demo of a song Grohl wrote called Alone
Plus Easy Target. Kurt listened to it in the
bathtub, apparently. He loved it so much that
he kissed Dave on the face. Wow. A literal kiss
of approval. A literal kiss. Kurt told him, I'm
so excited that you and Chris are going to contribute
more songwriting in the future. He didn't see
it as a threat. He saw it as a relief. He wanted
to share the creative burden. They even officially
recorded a Grohl song, right? Marigold. Yes.
Marigold was recorded during the in -utero sessions
and ended up as a B -side on the Heart -Shaped
Box single. It's the only Nirvana song where
Dave Grohl sings lead vocals. So the door was
cracking open for him to be more than just the
drummer. And then, April 1994. The wall comes
down. The world stops. Kurt Cobain takes his
own life. We have to sit with this for a moment.
This isn't just the band broke up. This is a
profound trauma event. Grohl is 25 years old.
His friend, his roommate, his musical partner
is dead. And the media storm that follows is
just insane. Grohl has said in interviews that
he didn't just quit music. He couldn't even listen
to the radio. He said music equaled death. Every
single time he heard a song, it just reminded
him of what he had lost. So he did what a lot
of people do when they're confronted with immense
grief. He ran. He went to Ireland. The Ring of
Kerry. One of the most remote, beautiful, and
desolate places on earth. He just wanted to disappear.
He was driving a rental car around these tiny
country roads thinking, maybe I'm done. Maybe
I'll just be a regular guy. And this is where
the story gets almost cinematic. I mean, if you
wrote this in a screenplay, a caduceus would
tell you it's too on the nose. It really is.
He's driving down a back road in rural Ireland.
Not another car in sight. He sees a hitchhiker
up ahead. He slows down, thinking he'll give
the guy a lift. As he gets closer, he looks at
the hitchhiker's T -shirt. It's a Kurt Cobain
T -shirt. Kurt's face just staring right back
at him on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere.
It's just chilling. It completely freaked him
out. But it also clarified everything in that
one instant. He realized, I can fly to the ends
of the earth and I cannot outrun this. The shadow
of Nirvana is going to follow him forever. So
he had a choice. Let it haunt him and define
him as a tragic figure or turn around and face
it. So he didn't pick up the hitchhiker? No,
he stepped on the gas and drove off. But he flew
home to Seattle immediately. He realized the
only way through the grief was to push through
it. He had to exercise the demon by making music
again. He books time at Robert Lang Studios in
Seattle. This is October 1994, so only about
six months after Kurt died. And he has a very
specific mission. He's going to record the songs
he's been hoarding for years. But he doesn't
want to form a band. He doesn't want the pressure
of the drummer from Nirvana's new band. He wants
to do it alone. So when we say alone, let's be
really specific about what that means. How does
one guy record a full rock album in a week? It's
a feat of endurance and meticulous planning.
He booked the studio for five or six days. He
would come in, visualize the song in his head,
and play the drum track from start to finish
with no other music to guide him. Just to a click
track? Not even always a click track, just a
song in his head. Then he'd run into the control
room, listen back to it, make sure it was good.
Then he'd run back out, pick up a bass guitar,
and record the bass part over the drums he just
played. Then the rhythm guitar. Then the lead
guitar. And finally, he'd do the vocals. He's
like painting a picture one color at a time.
Exactly. And you have to remember, this is on
analog tape. This isn't digital pro tools where
you can just copy -paste a good chorus or fix
a mistake. He had to play it right. All the way
through. He recorded 15 songs in one week. And
the result of that one week was the debut album
Foo Fighters. And let's talk about the name Foo
Fighters. Why did he choose that name? It's a
UFO term from World War II, right? Right. For
unidentified flying objects. It is. But he chose
it because it sounded like a group. It sounded
plural. He wanted people to pick up the cassette
and think, oh, who are the Foo Fighters? Is it
the gang? He was hiding in plain sight. He was
terrified of being a solo artist, of having his
name on the cover. But the tape gets out. Eddie
Vedder plays it on his radio show. Record labels
go absolutely crazy for it. It's a hit. And suddenly,
Dave has a good problem. He has a hit record,
but he has no band to play it live. He needs
bodies. He needs a lineup. And interestingly,
one of the first people he talked to was Chris
Novoselic. They almost reunited. They discussed
it. Chris apparently asked to join. But they
both had this moment of clarity. They realize
that if Chris joined, everyone would just see
it as Nirvana 2 .0 without Kurt. The ghost would
be too big. The pressure on Dave to fill Kurt's
shoes would be crushing. That feels like a very
mature and self -aware decision for two young
guys to make in that situation. They'd probably
save their friendship, to be honest. So instead,
Grohl recruits Pat Smear. who had been the touring
guitarist for Nirvana, so there was a comfortable
link there. And then he raids a band called Sunny
Day Real Estate. He poaches their entire rhythm
section, Nate Mendel on bass and William Goldsmith
on drums. And this brings us to the next critical
chapter, the transition from Dave the drummer
to Dave the frontman, and maybe more importantly,
Dave the boss. Because that nicest guy in rock
persona, it starts to get a little complicated
here. Yeah. We have to talk about the recording
of The Color and the Shape. This is the second
album. This is 1996 going into 1997. The band
is toured. They're a real unit. They go into
the studio to record the official follow -up,
and the pressure is on. The first album was basically
a demo he made by himself. This is the real test
of Foo Fighters as a band. And Dave isn't happy
with how it's going. He's not. He's listening
back to the recordings and he's deeply frustrated.
Specifically with the drum tracks. Which has
to be an incredibly awkward position. You have
arguably the world's most famous rock drummer
standing at the microphone judging the guy who
is currently sitting at the drums. It's a nightmare
scenario for William Goldsmith. He's a great
drummer. Sunny Day Real Estate is a legendary
emo band for a reason. But he's not Dave Grohl.
Dave was hearing a specific cadence, a specific
power, a specific snap in his head. He felt Goldsmith
wasn't hitting hard enough that the takes weren't
locking in with the grid he imagined. So does
he mentor him? Does he sit down and say, hey,
well, let's try it like this? He tries a bit,
but he's not a great communicator in that way.
He's conflict averse. So eventually he chooses
the nuclear option. He tells the band, hey, we're
going to take a little break. Then, without telling
Goldsmith, He flies to Los Angeles, goes into
a different studio and secretly rerecords all
the drum parts himself. He wiped the track. He
erased Goldsmith's work. He planned the drums
on Eva Long, Monkey Wrench, My Hero, pretty much
the entire album, except for maybe one or two
tracks. How does Goldsmith find out? He basically
hears the final mixes and realizes it's not him
playing. And he feels rightfully so completely
betrayed. He quit the band immediately. He was
devastated. I mean. That is cold. That is corporate
level ruthlessness. It is. It's conflict avoidance
turned into a weapon. Yeah. He couldn't handle
the direct confrontation of firing him or endlessly
correcting him. So he just did the work himself
behind his back. Grohl later expressed regret,
but also admitted, I don't know if I'm finished
playing the drums yet. But here is the uncomfortable
question we have to ask. Was he wrong to do it?
This is the central tension of Dave Grohl. Ethically,
it was a mess. It was a terrible way to treat
a bandmate. Artistically, he was 100 % right.
Because the color and the shape is a masterpiece.
It's a modern rock classic. It is the Foo Fighters
album. And the drumming on a song like Everlong
is iconic. It is frantic and precise and powerful.
And it drives the entire song. If Goldsmith had
played it, would it be that good? I think we
know the answer is probably not. Grohl sacrificed
the relationship to save the song and by extension,
the album. It establishes right then and there
that the Foo Fighters is not a democracy. It
is a benevolent dictatorship with Dave at the
top. Precisely. And Grohl realized that if he
was going to be the front man, he needed a drummer
who could match his intensity. He needed a twin.
He needed an equal. Enter Taylor Hawkins. Taylor
was the drummer for Alanis Morissette at the
time. You have to remember, this is the mid-'90s
Jagged Little Pill era. Alanis was the biggest
star on the planet. She was playing stadiums.
Taylor had the cushiest, best -paying gig in
the world for a drummer. So why would he leave
that to join a band that just had a very messy,
very public drummer firing? Because Taylor Hawkins
wanted to be in a rock and roll band. He didn't
want to just be a side man for a pop star. And
when he met Dave, it was instant chemistry. They
were like long lost brothers. Same energy, same
sense of humor, same love for Queen and the police.
They finished each other's sentences. They did.
And Taylor was an absolute monster behind the
kit. He's the only guy who could hit as hard
as Dave, who had that same explosive energy.
in the band, Dave finally felt comfortable stepping
away from the drums for good because he knew
the engine room was secure. So the classic lineup
of the band stabilizes. They release hit after
hit. There is nothing left to lose one by one
in your honor. They graduate from playing theaters
to arenas to stadiums all over the world. And
Grohl's reputation as this unstoppable, almost
superhuman force of nature really cements itself.
And absolutely nothing illustrates that better
than the Broken Leg Tour. Gothenburg, Sweden.
2015. He's running around the stage, hyping the
crowd up during the second song. Yeah. He miscalculates
a jump and falls 12 feet into the security pit.
Snap. His fibula is completely broken. Now 99
.9 % of performers would be in an ambulance within
two minutes. The show is over. Refunds are issued.
Tour is canceled. Dave Grohl grabs a microphone
while he's lying on a stretcher in the dirt.
He tells the crowd, I think I just broke my leg.
Then he looks at them and promises. I will be
back. And he does it. The medics drag him backstage.
They set the bone, put a temporary cast on him.
And 20 minutes later, he's carried back onto
the stage. He finishes the entire two and a half
hour concert sitting in a chair with his leg
propped up while a medic holds it in place. That
is pure adrenaline and just stubbornness. It
is the show must go on ethos taken to its absolute
extreme. But the tour was just starting. They
had a massive North American stadium run booked.
Canceling it would cost millions in insurance
claims and crew salaries and promoter fees. So
he designs the throne. He's high on painkillers
in the hospital after surgery, and he draws a
sketch on a napkin. A giant Game of Thrones -style
chair made of guitar necks with lights and a
motor and a seatbelt. He got his crew to build
it, and he toured the entire summer sitting in
that ridiculous, amazing throne. It became this
symbol of rock and roll resilience. Axl Rose
even borrowed it later when he broke his foot.
It just proves that the machine does not stop.
For anything. But speaking of machines not stopping,
we have to talk about his musical ADHD. Because
being the front man of one of the biggest bands
on Earth apparently isn't enough work for him.
He is constantly moonlighting. He seems to have
a compulsive need to collaborate. And I think
it comes from a deep -seated fear of stagnation.
If he sits still for too long, he gets bored.
The machine has to keep moving. So let's look
at Queens of the Stone Age. This is 2002. The
Foo Fighters are having a rough patch internally.
They're not getting along. Grohl takes a break
to go play drums on their album Songs for the
Deaf. And this is a really critical moment for
music nerds because the drumming on Songs for
the Deaf is totally different from his drumming
in Nirvana or even early Foo Fighters. How so?
What's the difference? Josh Holm, the leader
of Queens of the Stone Age, loves a very specific
style called motoric. It's a German concept.
Think of bands like Kraftwerk and New. It's robotic,
it's repetitive, it's incredibly driving. Holm
famously hates splashy cymbals washing over everything.
He wants the drums to sound dead and dry and
tight. So Grohl had to completely change his
style to fit that mold. He had to strip away
all the flashy fills, all the Bonham -esque cymbal
crashes. He had to be a machine. If you listen
to a song like No One Knows, the drums are so
tight and dry they sound like they were recorded
in a vacuum. The Grohl said it was the most fun
he'd had in years because he didn't have to be
the face or the leader. He just had to shut up
and drive. And then he swings to the complete
other end of the spectrum with the project, them
crooked vultures. The super group to end all
super groups. You have a damn Grohl on drums.
You have Josh Holm on guitar. And on bass guitar,
you have John Paul Jones. From Led Zeppelin.
I mean, can you even imagine? You're Dave Grohl.
You have a John Bonham Three Rings tattoo on
your arm. You learn to play drums by listening
to Zeppelin records over and over. And now you
are looking across the stage, and the guy who
wrote the bass line for Black Dog and the Lemon
song is waiting for you to start the song. The
pressure must have been absolutely suffocating.
But he stepped up to it. And musically, this
is so interesting because Zeppelin has a swing.
John Bonham famously played slightly behind the
beat. It's loose, it grooves, it breathes. Grohl
had to learn that feel. He couldn't just hammer
it like a punk rocker. He had to learn to dance
with it, to play with that legendary feel. It
really seems like these side projects are his
form of continuing education. He goes away, he
learns a new musical language, and then he brings
that knowledge back to the Foo Fighters. Absolutely.
He's a musical sponge. Probot, his middle project
where he wrote all the music and got his 80s
metal heroes like Lemmy to sing on it. Playing
with Paul McCartney, Tenacious D. He just never
stops learning. He's also a historian in a way.
We have to mention Sound City. He didn't just
participate in a documentary about a recording
studio. He directed it. But it wasn't just about
the building itself. It was about a very specific
piece of equipment inside that building. The
Neve 8028 mixing console. Okay, ELI 5 time. Explain
it like I'm 5. Why does a mixing console matter
so much? Isn't it just a bunch of knobs and faders?
In the digital age, maybe. But in the analog
age, the console was an instrument in itself.
The Neve 8028 is famous because of its internal
wiring and transformers. It adds a specific harmonic
distortion to the sound. It makes things sound
warm and thick and punchy. So when you plug a
guitar or a microphone into it, it just sounds
better than plugging it directly into a computer.
Much better. It sounds human. It has character,
and that is Grohl's personal crusade. He hates
the cold perfection of digital recording. He
hates autotune. He hates when producers use computers
to snap drums to a perfect robotic grid. He wants
to hear the mistakes. He wants to hear the tempo
speed up and slow down naturally. Which is pretty
ironic, considering he erased William Goldsmith's
drums for not being perfect enough for his vision.
It is deeply ironic. But Grohl... would argue,
I think, that he wants human perfection, not
computer perfection. He wants the perfect feel,
not the perfect grid. So let's give it to the
man himself. We've talked about the musician,
but who is Dave Grohl when the amps are turned
off? We have the nice guy narrative, but there
are some real complexities there. Well, first
of all, there is a very real physical cost to
everything we've been talking about. Dave Grohl
is significantly hearing impaired. He's going
deaf. He has terrible tinnitus, a constant ringing,
especially in his left ear, which is the ear
that's closest to the snare drum and the onstage
monitor wedge. He has admitted in interviews
that he has been reading lips for 20 years. If
he's in a crowded restaurant, he says he can't
hear a word you're saying. And yet he refuses
to wear the in -ear monitors on stage that all
the other musicians use. Right. Most pros wear
in -ears now. They're like custom molded earbuds.
They block out the dangerous stage volume and
let you hear a perfect mix at a safe volume.
Grohl refuses to use them. He still uses old
school floor wedges that just blast sound at
his face all night. But why? That seems completely
self -destructive. He says in -ears remove him
from the natural atmosphere. He wants to hear
the crowd screaming. He wants to feel the air
moving from the amplifiers. He prioritizes that
raw connection with the audience over his own
physical health. incredibly stubborn, but it's
also very on brand for him. What about his politics?
Rock stars can be very divisive. Grohl seems
to thread a needle pretty well, but he's definitely
not neutral. No, he's not. He's a classic liberal.
He grew up with a public school teacher mom in
the D .C. area. He supported John Kerry, Obama,
Biden. He played at the 2012 Democratic National
Convention. But he doesn't usually get on a soapbox
and preach. He tends to use music and humor.
Like the Westboro Baptist Church incident. This
is a perfect example of how he operates. The
Westboro Baptist Church, this infamous hate group
that pickets soldiers' funerals, decided to picket
a Foo Fighters concert in Kansas City. Because
rock and roll is the devil's music or something.
Something like that. Now, most bands would either
ignore them or issue a stern press release condemning
them. Grohl put the entire band on the back of
a flatbed truck, drove it out into the parking
lot right in front of the protesters, and played
a disco song called Keep It Clean Hot Buns. He
Rickrolled them in person. He drowned out their
hate speech with high -volume, homoerotic disco
dancing. It was weaponized joy. He made them
look completely ridiculous without ever getting
angry or engaging them on their level. But the
St. Dave armor, as we've called it, took a massive
hit recently. We have to address the elephant
in the room. the 2024 scandal. We do. For 20
years, Dave Grohl was the ultimate family man,
married to Jordan Blum since 2003, three daughters.
He was the rock star dad who drove a minivan
and coached his daughter's soccer team. And then
in September of 2024, an Instagram post. A simple
black screen with white text. He announced that
he had fathered a daughter outside of his marriage.
It was a shock, a genuine shock to his fan base.
It broke the Internet for 24 hours. People were
genuinely devastated. I think it's because we,
the public, projected so much virtue onto him.
We wanted him to be the one guy who was perfect.
And the reality is he's a guy who spends 10 months
a year on the road. who has a history of infidelity.
He's admitted to cheating in his first marriage
back in the 90s and who made a massive life -altering
mistake. He asked for his family's forgiveness
publicly and said he would be a loving parent
to the new child. But it definitely shattered
the pedestal. It reminded all of us that nice
guy is a brand, but Dave Grohl is a complex,
flawed human being just like everyone else. And
that brings us really to the current era of his
life, because just like in 1994, he is currently
navigating a world that has been completely redefined
by a massive loss. The death of his best friend,
Taylor Hawkins, in March of 2022. If losing Kurt
Cobain was the defining trauma of his youth,
losing Taylor Hawkins is the defining trauma
of his middle age. It might be even worse in
some ways. He knew Kurt for about three years.
He knew Taylor for 25 years. They were inseparable.
He was the best man at his wedding. Taylor died
in a hotel in Columbia while they were on tour.
I think everyone, myself included, thought that
was the end of the Foo Fighters. How do you possibly
replace your soulmate? But Grohl did what Grohl
always does. He processed the grief through work.
He went into a studio and made a record. They
released the album. But here we are in 2023.
It is a heavy, heavy record. It's devastating.
It's explicitly about the grief of losing Taylor
and also about his mother, Virginia, who passed
away in the same year. A one -two punch of unimaginable
loss. And musically, what did he do on that album?
He got back behind the drums. He played all the
drum tracks on the album himself as a full circle
moment, just like in 1994 when his world fell
apart. His fourth instinct was to go into a studio
by himself and start hitting things. It's his
therapy. So as we wrap this up, what is the ultimate
takeaway? We've looked at the punk kid hitting
pillows, the grunge engine, the ruthless CEO,
the super collaborator, and the grieving friend.
The takeaway for me is momentum. Dave Grohl is
a shark. If he stops swimming, he feels like
he'll die. His entire life, his entire career
is a reaction against stasis. He keeps moving
forward just to survive. Exactly. When Scream
died, he immediately joined Nirvana. When Nirvana
died, he built the Fee Fighters from the ashes.
When the Foo Fighters got stale in the early
2000s, he jumped ship to play with QKSA. When
Taylor died, he made a fock. But here we are.
He fundamentally refuses to let tragedy be the
end of the story. And now they have a new drummer,
the great Josh Fries. The machine is back on
a road, playing stadiums again. But the dynamic
has changed, hasn't it? He's no longer the young
guy in rock. He's the elder statesman. He's the
ultimate survivor. And so the real question is,
will he keep this massive stadium machine running
forever? Or given the immense personal turmoil
and the loss of his best friend, will we see
him eventually return to that 1994 mode? Just
a guy alone in a room making music for himself
away from the spotlight. Knowing Dave Grohl,
he'll probably try to do both at the same time.
They'll probably pull it off somehow. It's been
a fascinating ride from hitting pillows in a
bedroom in Virginia to the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame. Twice. Not bad for a high school dropout.
Thanks for listening to this deep dive into the
life and career of Dave Grohl. We'll catch you
on the next one. See you then.