The industry’s biggest names have the last word on their life in music... Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters/Nirvana
This living legend requires no introduction. As Foo Fighters celebrate the release of their incredible new album Medicine At Midnight, Dave Grohl looks back on his journey so far, from Nirvana to performing songs for US presidents...
INTERVIEW: GEORGE GARNER
Playing Joe Biden’s inauguration was surreal… “You have to understand that I still consider us a garage band that just happens to play in front of hundreds of thousands of people. There’s a real disconnect there. I truly don’t hold us in the same regard as the other artists that were playing. Truthfully, it was really emotional, not only to see this new administration begin, but also to see it happening in the city that I grew up playing music in. As Katy Perry was singing and fireworks were exploding over Washington D.C., it reminded me of being a kid on the Fourth of July on the Mall and watching the national fireworks display. It was a full circle moment because I used to go to Rock Against Reagan protest concerts in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and here I am playing the inauguration!”
Nirvana were either…
“The best band you’d ever seen, or the biggest fucking train wreck you could possibly imagine [laughs]. There was no middle ground. I remember someone once telling me that the best bands don’t have mediocre shows, and we never did! It was either this transcendent experience where you felt you had witnessed something from another universe, or you walked away thinking, ‘I paid $8 for that!?’ My place in the band was just to make as much thunder as I possibly could to push what was going on with Krist and Kurt. It was amazing. The only thing I really had to pay attention to was Kurt fucking jumping into the drum set at the end of the show!”
When I made Foo Fighters’ debut I was lost… “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, but I didn’t want to be caught in the sadness of what had just happened [Kurt Cobain’s death by suicide]. I just felt the need to record those songs, so that I could feel like life was worth living. The sequence of the album is the one I recorded the songs in – we only had five fucking days. There was a lot of coffee and enthusiasm, but there wasn’t a 25-year world domination plan!”
My manager, John Silva, is…
“The fuel that’s filled my engine for over a quarter of a century. I come to John with the craziest fucking ideas like, ‘I want to do a documentary! I want to do a movie!’ And he’s the first person to say, ‘Well, here’s all the reasons why that won’t work.’ Then I turn to him and say, ‘Fucking figure it out!’ And for 25 years he’s figured it out! I work for him; he works for me. We’ve done this together a long time and I love him like a brother. And I fucking hate him like a boss [laughs].”
98 | Music Week
Making Foo Fighters’ fourth album One By One... “Was like when you’re preparing dinner for your friends and family and spend the entire day cooking. By the time you serve the meal, it’s the last fucking thing in the world you want to eat because it took so long to make. That’s the fourth album to me. There are songs I love to play, and I love that people enjoy them, but we had already made it once. We spent months and months and months making it, and then we fucking ditched it. I joined Queens Of The Stone Age, and the Foo Fighters almost broke up; it was this really tumultuous period where we almost didn’t last. We eventually came back together and re-recorded it in eight or nine days. By the time we were finished, I was like, ‘God, enough of that already! What a fucking nightmare!’”
The lyrics on Medicine At Midnight… “Were written long before the pandemic, but over time, I’ve realised that a lot of them apply even more so to what’s happening right now. It’s strange. Lyric writing for me is pretty immediate, and usually happens in front of a microphone, or sitting on the floor, as people are waiting for me to sing something, anything. I’m not the type that wanders around with a leather-bound journal scribbling poetry on a park bench, that’s just not the way I do it. Usually, when I write a lyric, I don’t completely understand what I’m saying at the time and then as I sing it, or perform it, I begin to understand it a little more. But I don’t know... Ask my fucking therapist! I haven’t talked to her in two years, so I probably should, too!”
When Foo Fighters finally play live in front of fans again…
“It’s going to be like two lovers running through a field of dandelions in slow motion, and colliding. The wettest, sloppiest, fucking disgusting tongue kiss is exactly what it will be. If we can make it through the first song without just breaking down in tears, then we’ll be fine. I would imagine that there’s going to be this collective energy, which will be sadness, relief, joy and fucking chaos. It’ll be insane. I can’t fucking wait.”
“You have to understand, I still consider us to be a garage band!”
musicweek.com
Heart of Grohl: Foo Fighters’ new album Medicine At Midnight is out now via Roswell/Columbia
PHOTO: Danny Clinch
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