by Mick Wall
The TV series made its debut on 17 October in the US and was an instant critical success. It certainly fulfilled Dave’s promise of being ‘a love letter to American music’. Effectively an eight-part musical travelogue, each episode featured multiple interviews, done by Dave himself, and culminated in the recording of a song with a musician associated with the studio – in Chicago, it was Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen; in Austin it was the rising bluesman Gary Clark Jr; in Los Angeles it was the Eagles’ guitarist Joe Walsh. Other guests included Dave’s former Scream band mates on the raucous ‘The Feast and the Famine’ (recorded in Washington, DC), the Nashville-based country singer Zac Brown, who added vocals and ‘devil-picking’ to the sleek ‘Congregation’, and David Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti, who arranged the strings on the seven-minute epic, ‘I am a River’.
The Sonic Highways album followed less than a month later. Despite the multitude of guests, it sounded undeniably like a Foo Fighters record, even if it smoothed out the rough edges of the wilfully raw Wasting Light. For Dave it was both the logical culmination of his lifelong obsession with music and definitive proof that even though he was the leader of one of the most successful rock bands of his generation, he was still a fan at heart – albeit one with a huge amount of pulling power and clout.
‘He absolutely calls the shots now,’ says Paul Brannigan. ‘He can obviously do whatever he wants. He’s just done an HBO series. He’s not gonna be short on offers to direct other music documentaries. He’s already making videos, he did one for Soundgarden [2013’s ‘By Crooked Steps’]. He can pretty much flick through the Rolodex of popular culture at the moment and pick out anybody in the musical world and say, “Do you fancy doing something?” There are no barriers absolutely now to whatever he chooses to do. Whether that’s a good thing for the Foo Fighters remains to be seen, but certainly from Dave Grohl’s perspective, you’ve got to think you’re in a pretty sweet position right now, however you choose to move on from this. It really does seem like a pretty limitless horizon at this point, whatever he should choose to do.’
Dave certainly pulled in the big names to a gig held to celebrate his forty-sixth birthday party at the Los Angeles Forum in January 2015. The band were joined by Kiss’s singer, Paul Stanley, Van Halen’s frontman, Dave Lee Roth, the Tenacious D duo of Jack Black and Kyle Gass, Jane’s Addiction’s singer, Perry Farrell, and, for a climactic cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Let It Roll’, the Motörhead mainman, Lemmy, ex-Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Ozzy Osbourne’s six-stringer, Zakk Wylde.
Rita Haney, widow of the late Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell, suggests that Grohl relishes the role of bringing people together. ‘He’s like David Lee Roth,’ says Haney from her home in LA. ‘He’s just got that grin. He hit me up to see if I could put him in touch with Zakk Wylde to see if Zakk would do that birthday thing he was doing. It was like a day or so before and we were texting and I said, “What are you up to?” and he said, “I’m bored in the studio, just messing around with the Charlie Brown theme.” I was like, “I need to hear this.” He immediately sent me this audio. It was really funny. He’s a character – always positive. He’s not one of those energy vampires. Just a positive guy.’
For Paul Brannigan, Dave Grohl remains the same person he first met in the Nineties, just less available. ‘It’s harder to get to him. I remember running into Dave at other gigs in London, or in America, where he wasn’t playing but he would just be there, watching some other band. That still happens, but not quite so often as it would have done in the late Nineties. And he’s got a family now and whatever. But when you sit in front of Dave it doesn’t seem that anything has particularly changed. It doesn’t seem that different from sitting in the pub getting drunk with one of your friends, talking about some obscure seven-inch records or AC/DC albums or whatever. You almost have to remind yourself that this is somebody that is going to be headlining Glastonbury, and doing two nights at Wembley.’
Dave’s own journey from gawky punk rock kid through personal tragedy into bona fide rock god is one of the more unlikely success stories of the last 20 years. If nothing else, it does show that sometimes nice guys do finish first. ‘Out of the fires, phoenixes rise, and that’s exactly what Dave’s done,’ says Anton Brookes. ‘And he’s done it in a dignified way. He hasn’t raped the carcass of Nirvana. He’s not used that golden ticket to fulfil his career. He was given opportunities because he was Dave Grohl from Nirvana but he had to earn that right. People were waiting sharpening the knives in the wing, waiting for him to fall so they could launch into him.’
Anton draws a parallel between Dave’s own fandom and the levels of devotion he inspires in his band’s following. ‘The fans love them. With every new record that came out, the fan base grew and grew. [To the point now where] it’s dads and sons, mothers and daughters. They can enjoy them on almost a spiritual plateau together. Both get the same yet something different from the band.’
It’s no surprise that 2015 has seen the Foo Fighters play to more people than ever before. The summer was to have seen the Foo Fighters undertaking another two-night stand at Wembley Stadium as well as an even more prestigious debut headlining slot at the iconic Glastonbury Festival, the five-day celebration of music that takes place in the southwest of Britain and regularly attracts audiences of upwards of 150,000 people. As Metallica’s 2014 appearance at Glastonbury proved, headlining the festival has the power to take a band to an entirely new audience.
Unfortunately, though, when Dave Grohl broke his leg when he fell from the stage during a show in Sweden in June, it put all those plans in abeyance. A downer for Foos fans but an even bigger blow to the band. At the time of writing, Grohl has just told Rolling Stone that he’s making progress in his recovery, saying, ‘I’m starting to do a little bit of rehab exercise and the cast is off. The swelling’s down. The pain’s gone. It’s just a matter of getting those kick-drum muscles back, man. I can’t fucking lose those. That’s important to me. So I’m sitting here, moving it around, doing my exercise as we speak.’
In the meantime he is using a removable boot and points out that his accident could have been much worse. ‘I could have done some real damage. This is pretty gnarly, but it could have been a lot worse.’ He said his physical therapist told him, ‘It was basically like my ankle got into a forty-mile-per-hour car crash.’ Ouch!
* * *
Having been forced to cancel seven dates, including those huge UK shows, the Foos are now back on tour in the US, with Dave singing while seated on a giant throne, his leg raised in front of him on a chair. He joked that the ‘easiest part of my whole day’ are the shows, ‘the rest of the time, I’m hobbling around trying to brush my teeth and pack my bags and walk down the street and get a cup of coffee. The challenge is the other twenty-one hours of the day.’
They will be back, possibly as soon as next summer when Glastonbury will be simply the latest staging post on a career that, 20 years ago, would have been unthinkable by everyone up to and including Dave Grohl himself. But while he has achieved so much in his career thus far, the future has endless possibilities. There is now talk of a follow-up album and series to Sonic Highways, this time based in Britain. Meanwhile, Dave Grohl has become the rock superstar it’s now against the law not to love.
But what of the city that first made him famous – Seattle? I end by asking Charles Cross what the word on the street in Seattle is these days about Dave Grohl and his Foo Fighters? If anyone is qualified to judge, it is he. Typically, he pulls no punches in his assessment.
‘Well, it’s complicated,’ he says. ‘You know, a lot of the members of the bands in Seattle that didn’t become super-famous, but even the guys that did, even the guys in Pearl Jam or Soundgarden you run into … they are pretty down to earth. Very little ego. If you acted like you were a big deal in Seattle you’re very quickly going to become isolated from the community of musicians, writers, club owners. If there is a secret to the Seattle ethos, it is that every
body is equal, depending on the quality of the songs they’re writing and the live performance they’re putting on. It didn’t matter how many records you sold. It didn’t matter how famous you were or how many magazine covers you were on. There’s a couple bands that didn’t make it big, like Pure Joy and Love Battery, to name just a couple, that are not as big as the bands that became big, and everybody cares about them just as much in Seattle, that supports their shows. You see superstar musicians at their shows, or you did in the day when they were around.
‘So the Foo Fighters were born out of that. I mean, Sunny Day Real Estate plays a huge role in the Foo Fighters. And though Sunny Day Real Estate is not very known far and wide, everybody when they talked about the Foo Fighters early on, nobody said it’s the guy from Nirvana. Everyone said it’s the guy from Nirvana and the guys from Sunny Day Real Estate. That was in the same sentence. There was no comma between those two. That’s how people in Seattle approached it. And that is a key to understanding Seattle.’
20 years on, however, ‘Dave’s got a very carefully cultivated public image where he’s able to … He has everything that Kurt never could have. He can both be the nicest guy in music and a simple guy who just loves music. And yet he’s also the head of a major corporation and the leader of a huge band. So he has both the capacity to be a huge star and yet also walk through the public as though he is the everyman. Kurt wanted that but he never got that. Kurt was either completely unknown or overnight he was massively famous. He couldn’t have it both ways and if Kurt were alive now, I have to say that’s probably what he would most admire about Dave, more than the music. He would be, “Dude, how on earth did you manage to pull this off? How can you have these two personalities in the public?”’
Anton Brookes, who was there with Kurt and Krist long before they had ever heard of Dave Grohl, and who was also there when the latter made his seemingly impossible transition to global superstar on his own terms, has the final word.
‘A lot of people like rock’n’roll to be straightforward,’ he says. ‘They put music on and it’s escapism. They don’t want music that is a refection of your life; you want something that is happy, jolly with a bit of meaning to get you through the day. And that’s what the Foo Fighters is. Where Nirvana was the crutch for a generation. It was propping up people. Even today, the disenfranchised youth around the world, teenagers are still finding angst within that message of Kurt’s angst.
‘I think Dave, deliberately, from the get-go, was like: that’s what Nirvana did, I’m going [the other] way. Because, can you imagine, if Dave even attempted playing a Nirvana song live? Can you imagine what the media would have done to him? Can you imagine what Courtney’s reaction would be? It’s been hard enough for Dave to stand up to a lot of unfair slings and arrows and accusations without that.’
Instead, Dave set his sights high. Impossibly so, it seemed at so many junctures. Nonetheless here he still is, higher up in the clouds than ever.
Anton smiles. ‘You look at him from playing to small crowds to arenas and now stadiums, and he pulls out all the stops. It’s really funny. When Dave goes onstage, he’s always been a performer. As a drummer, he was your archetypal sarcastic joke-telling drummer who made everybody laugh. That was part of his character and part of his charm and appeal. I always thought with Dave, though, that was a bit of a smokescreen that he used to keep people away. I always thought Dave used that as a gauge to get to know people. And as you got to know him and he got to know you, then the real Dave came out. But if you didn’t get to know Dave, all you got was like, “Hey,” and a slap on the back. All smiles and teeth and goofiness.
‘I think that’s probably something he learned from being in Nirvana, which kept his sanity and kept him safe and kept a lot of the trappings that come with rock’n’roll away. Especially the parasites; the people that latch on to bands and performers. I think Dave learned the hard way from seeing what happened with Nirvana, and used to that to his own devices.
‘I think also as a songwriter, as a musician, he just blossomed and got better with everything he’s done. I always marvelled and laughed at Dave when he was onstage because he’d come running out … As soon as he beamed onstage, as soon as he came onstage and he smiled, the audience just smiled back. They loved him. And he camps it up. He’s a rock’n’roll star but he’s Benny Hill! He’ll be running and pretend to trip or something, and laugh and point at the crowd. He smiles and he talks to them and he tells jokes and he burps and he farts and whistles. To be fair to Dave, after a couple of years he was no longer Dave from Nirvana. He became Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters who was in Nirvana. Where some of the media dubbed him the Grunge Ringo, he quickly outgrew that and he blossomed into one of the greatest songwriters and musicians that the planet has had to offer for a long, long time.’
And his story is not even half over yet.
Scream. L-R: Dave Grohl, Peter Stahl, Skeeter Thompson and Franz Stahl. Franz was Dave’s guitar mentor and was in Foo Fighters – before apprentice turned master and fired him. (Corbis)
‘Kurt could sleep anywhere!’ Nirvana during an interview in 1991. (Getty Images)
Nirvana do zany for the cameras at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. (Getty Images)
Dave and Krist join Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Anthony Kiedis (left) and Flea (right) in some cross-dressing ‘antics’. (Getty Images)
By 1993 being in Nirvana wasn’t fun anymore, even if Dave still put a brave face on it. (Stephen Sweet /REX Shutterstock)
Go towards the light: Kurt’s dark glamour would soon be replaced by Dave’s bright tomorrow. (Stephen Sweet /REX Shutterstock)
Nirvana on the In Utero tour, 1993. (Getty Images)
According to Courtney Love, ‘Kurt hated Dave’. (REX Shutterstock)
Original Foo Fighters line-up, 1995. L-R: William Goldsmith, Pat Smear, Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel. (Corbis)
The ill-starred Franz Stahl years. ‘I cried,’ says Stahl, when Dave sacked him. (Getty Images)
Foo Fighters arriving at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards. (Getty Images)
Not such a nice guy. By the end of the 1990s, Dave had asserted his leadership of Foo Fighters. (Getty Images)
Guitarist Chris Shiflett (back) joined the Foos in 1999, but didn’t actually play on any of their albums until 2002. (Getty Images)
On the tour bus. L-R: Chris Shiflett, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Dave Grohl. (Getty Images)
I’ll stick around. Dave with one-time love, former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur. (Getty Images)
A Fender guitar signed by Foo Fighters, 2005. It was featured in the ‘Music, Mud and Mayhem’ exhibition of memorabilia from the Reading Festival. (Geoffrey Swaine/ REX Shutterstock)
This is a call. Dave with newly-pregnant second wife Jordyn Blum, at a Grammy party in early 2006. (Getty Images)
Foo Fighters play to crowds of over 60,000 people at Hyde Park, London, 2006. (Getty Images)
The first time Foo Fighters headlined London’s Wembley Stadium in 2008, ‘I didn’t sleep for six months leading up to it,’ says Dave. (PA Images)
Legendary Nirvana and Foo Fighters producer Butch Vig. Working with Butch again, says Dave, was ‘not unlike going back and fucking a girlfriend you had twenty years ago – perfectly natural and totally comfortable’. (Getty Images)
Dave Grohl reminisces about Nirvana on stage, headlining Reading festival in 2012. (Tom Watkins/REX Shutterstock)
Dave Grohl’s birthday bash in 2015. Smells like … success! Dave and Foos contemplate their ballooning fortunes. (Getty Images)
Dave Grohl performs on a throne-like set-up with his broken leg. On tour in 2015, after the accident that forced the Foos to cancel Glastonbury. Back on the sonic highway. (Getty Images)
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print
index are listed below.
9.30 Club
Albini, Steve
on Dave Grohl
Alternative Press
Azerrad, Michael
BAM
Beatles
Big Black
Billboard
Bonham, John
Brannigan, Paul
on Dave Grohl
Brookes, Anton
on Kurt Cobain
on Foo Fighters
on Dave Grohl
on Nevermind
on Nirvana
on Krist Novoselic
on Reading Festival (2012)
Cameron, Keith
Cavanagh, Dave
Channing, Chad
Circle Jerks
Clash
Classic Rock
Cobain, Kurt Donald
and Chad Channing
and Dave Grohl
and In Utero title
and Courtney Love, see CL
