Hes the most prolific rock star of the last 30 years.
Somehow, were still getting to know him.
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I meetDave Grohlthe day after a mid-SeptemberFoo Fightersgig that almost didnt happen.
Moments before Grohl made the call, he got the all clear from the pilot.
Foo Fighters raced into St. Joes flanked by a police escort, opening with the triumphant Times Like These.
Its the fall of 1991.
Nirvana is in the middle of a club tour whenNevermindis released.
It sells a few thousand copies in the first few weeks.
By the end of the year, its selling hundreds of thousands per week.
We knew it was going to be on the show.
But we were moving so quickly at that point.
I dont think we realized what was happening until months later.
The thing we did notice was the amount of people at the shows.
We were booking places like the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C.
It held 200 people.
Its so different now.
You find like-minded friends who are trapped by the same obsession.
You start playing your own shitty songs in the basement.
Maybe you do it in front of people and you start to crave this relationship with the audience.
The other stuff, if it ever comes, comes much later.
Its a different world now.
The initial intention is genuine, and that never goes away.
In 1992, you released thePocketwatchtape, your first solo project, under the pseudonym Late!
I was just smoking weed, and I didnt have anything else to do.
Guys, I have some songs I think we should play!
Recognizing Kurts brilliance as a songwriter, I wasnt going to have a go at squeeze in there.
I was like,I know what my role in this band is.
I need to pound my drums and push these songs out into an audience like a steamroller.
I had a cassette.
I played them for Kurt and bassistKrist Novoselicin the van one day.
My friend Jenny Toomey had a label.
She heard one of the songs and said, Im doing a compilation.
Do you want to put a song on there?
And then I started trying to write songs.
Before, they were just these fucking crazy punk-rock experiments.
I recorded the songs Floaty and Alone + Easy Target.
I was proud of them.
I remember playing Alone + Easy Target for Kurt.
So we never used it.
In the last session Nirvana did, we recorded a song called You Know Youre Right.
We sat in the studio waiting for Kurt for a few days.
In that time, I recorded Exhausted, which wound up on the first Foo Fighters record.
Kurt liked that one, too.
I didnt want to confuse his process.
AfterNevermind, Nirvana joined with producerSteve AlbiniforIn Utero.Compared with the previous record, its confrontational and abrasive.
There was pressure from the label about sanding down rough edges.
It wasnt always All for one, one for all.
That pressure was put on Kurt, and Im sure it wasnt easy for him to navigate that clearly.
When we returned with those mixes, someone at the record company said, Youve got to be joking.
I dont want to say its my favorite Nirvana record, but its definitely the most powerful to me.
I loved playing those songs live.
I wish I still could.
Ive done it a few times.
Ive played Heart-Shaped Box.
You dont rip into Scentless Apprentice every now and then?I mean, Im getting old, man.
I wondered if you did.I hadnt, and I have kind of a different version of that story.
I was really upset because I thought things were okay.
I talked to Krist, and I said, Is that really what you guys want to do?
I eventually talked to Kurt about it, and he said, No.
Thats not what we want to do.
I cant speak for Kurt, and I dont usually because hes not around to speak for himself.
Each of us dealt with it in different ways, but ultimately thats a hard thing to navigate.
We had shunned mainstream commercial appeal and were perfectly happy in our world behind the fucking shadows.
Then we become one ofthem.
How do you fucking process that?
There was a lot of chaos within and outside the band.
You had to hang on for dear life and hope the ride didnt stop.
Im selective in what I tell everybody.
Heres the thing: Nirvana were people.
Its hard to remember when it becomes a logo or a T-shirt.
It was just three people who wound up writing songs, touring around in a van.
If my daughters ask me questions about Nirvana, I will answer every one of those questions.
Publishing is a good example.
We have a Bernie Sandersstyle formula for publishing on every song.
You dont have to play on or write the song and youll still get publishing on it.
It removes the conversation so you dont wind up in any sort of inner conflict.
The history of rock and roll is filled with that same old story over and over again.
To me, the best idea was to nip it in the bud and have this formula for everything.
You havent had any major scandals in your career.
How did you pull that off?Ill go back to when Kurt died.
I sat and made a cup of coffee.I can have a cup of coffee today.
But he cant.I got in my car to take a drive.Beautiful day.
That becomes your divining rod.
I just want to get to tomorrow.
I just want to fucking make it one more day.
Especially in Im not going to say in times like these.
The concept of starting over is a recurring theme.
Ive been through it more than a few times in life.
You hit a crossroads and you have to steer your path.
When Foo Fighters were makingThe Colour and the Shape,I was going through so much fucking shit.
I had nowhere to live.
I was going through a divorce.Pat was fucking leaving the band.
The drummer had fucking quit.I didnt have any fucking money in my pocket.
Im sleeping in my friends back room.
His dog was pissing on me every night in my bed.
I was ready to snap.
I had these journals; I would list each of these problems individually.
If I focus on one at a time, maybe I could solve these problems.
Maybe I can make it through.So I try not to get overwhelmed by everything thats going on.
I hit things one at a time.
The biggest band in the world shatters, and you land on your feet with a great album.
Do you listen to that self-titled record much?I listened to it not too long ago.
Sonically, its a crazy record.
The studio is unlike any other studio Ive ever been to in my life.
Its built into the side of a hill.
Its like a gigantic bunker.
The live room, the tracking room, is all stone and marble.
Most people would consider that too harsh of an acoustic environment.
We had six days, and I had 14 songs.
And theres only one person playing this shit.
So I could spend maybe two hours on a song.
So within like an hour and 15 minutes, I was done with the instrumental track.
And I had to do, like, four a day.
The intention wasnt to make a record.
It was just to fucking record these songs on a 24-track.
You have recorded in basements and garages, in professional and personal studios.
The magic of that old warehouse in an industrial complex in Los Angeles.
It makes no sense why the room sounds the way it does.
Its like the Bermuda Triangle of fucking studios.
Because we were nobody.
They were going to hand us this big check … which wasnt that big.
It was, I dont know, $35,000.
When a record company says, Well give you a million dollars today, what do you do?
Thats the poison apple.
Or you take it and pull a rock-and-roll swindle.
We were very familiar withthe Sex Pistols story.I think we did the right thing.
We followedSonic Youths path.We got Sonic Youths manager.
We signed with the label they were on.
They blazed the trail.
They were the ones that made it safe for a band like us to get a record deal.
You spent the 80s and 90s trying to find a stable band situation.
Scream busted up, followed by Nirvana.
I almost see Foo Fighters as an afterlife for you.
Has there been much turbulence?You reach a point where you cannot break up.
Stop playing for ten years, but dont tell anybody you broke up.
Its like your grandparents getting a divorce.
What the fuck you going to do that for?
I go down to see the show.
I thought,They play good together.
Ill give them a tape.
Maybe well go jam.Which we did.
Our first practice was in William Goldsmiths basement of his parents house where he lived.
We threw it together almost the same way you put a band together in high school.
Just the thought of sitting at a drum stool broke my heart without Kurt being there.
I had a fucking dream about him again two nights ago.
I have these recurring dreams about him.
In the dreams, the band gets back together, and we do it again.
Krist and Pat and I have a different connection to those songs than anyone else.
The whole idea with the Foo Fighters was to be a continuation of life.
When Kurt died, someone from this band called 7 Year Bitch sent me a card.
It took a while to get there, but the Foo Fighters saved my life, still.
We lost Kurt Cobain.
We lost Layne Staley,Chris Cornell, Kristen Pfaff from Hole, Stefanie from 7 Year.
Did you ever feel like the scene was haunted as it was happening?No.
I mean, coming from Washington, D.C., I had never experienced heroin.
Ive still never taken it.
D.C. wasnt really a heroin town.
Seattle was a heroin capital.
Its a port to the east.
The alcoholism rates are so high, and theres a lot of drug use and heroin everywhere.
Fast-forward to the sessions for the second Foo Fighters album,The Colour and the Shape.
When you rerecorded Goldsmiths drums, he quit the band.We started making the record in the fall of 96.
We booked a studio outside of Seattle called Bear Creek.
We had a producer, Gil Norton.
Hes English, famous for working on the Pixies records.
Wed written some songs, and we were doing preproduction.
He was a taskmaster, a whip-cracking, ass-kicking, do-it-50-times-to-get-it-right kind of producer.
I was into it.
But it was hard.
As we were doing prepro, everybody snapped.
I remember watching Nate after a rehearsal throw his bass in the fucking trash can.
I could see that William was not used to getting worked this hard by the producer.
I was doing vocal take after vocal take.
Im like,Fuck.
Im the worst fucking singer in the world.I could see it wearing on William.
So we took some time off for Christmas.
I went back to Washington.
I wrote two new songs: Walking After You and Everlong.
I demoed them in about an hour.
I come back with these two demos.
With Everlong, Gil said, I think we should rerecord this and make it great.
He said, I think you should play the drums.
Im like, Fuck, man.
Meanwhile, Williams up in Seattle.
We do it, and Gils like, What about this other song?
Im like, Just the fast part on the song.
I start redoing drums.
Im like, Fuck, man.
I got to call William and tell him were redoing some of the drums.
I should have called him sooner.
I flew up to Seattle to talk to him about it.
He said, Im quitting the band.
Im like, No, no, no, no.
Stay in the band.
Play these songs, and well push through this, and he said no.
I said, Really?
You should do that for a little while.
I used to dig ditches.
I begged him to stay; he refused to stay.
Thats the bottom line.
Sunny Day Real Estatereunited and worked on a fifth album at your studio a few years ago.
The album never materialized.
Goldsmith came out and said you shoulder some responsibility for the album not coming together.
Yeah, Nate said there was no truth to those remarks.
I wanted to know what your feeling about all that was.
Have you heard that record?
We heard a song or two.
Lipton Witch was all right.Yeah.
I mean, to be perfectly honest, I dont give that shit any bandwidth.
When its so devoid of any reality, I dont even clock in.
Im just like, Meh.
Your memoir starts off detailing some of the toll that being a front man has taken on your body.
Have you considered slowing down?
Or is that what this year is?
You are vulnerable and fragile.
you should probably slow down.
Isaw you in Madison Square Garden in 2018.
There was a precision, which I think is the hallmark of the Foo Fighters.
It is certainly a drummers band in that respect.
You made sure that nothing ever felt scripted, though.
But musically we have a saying: If it gets any better, its going to get worse.
We rehearse to a point.
I dont like rehearsing extended jam sections in the middle of songs.
Its going to happen when it happens.
I dont want to choreograph that.
The thing that gets me to the next show is not knowing whats going to happen next.
Especially after 26 fucking years.
Talk about trollingWestboro Baptist protestersat your shows off and on for a decade.Its just too easy.
If they werent so brutally offensive, we wouldnt care, but what they stand for is horrifying.
But I have to be honest.
Its like,Wow.Im just standing up there playing a Bee Gees song.
Youre a self-taught guitarist and singer and drummer.
Im curious about transference between those skills.
The other day, I was listening toWasting Light,where youre really shredding.
When I play guitar, I look at the low E string like its a kick drum.
I look at the A string like its a snare drum.
I look at the higher strings as they ring out like cymbals.
So its all connected.
I also think of composition and arrangement like wheels in a clock.
I remember the first time I realized that Kashmir, by Zeppelin, was two opposing time signatures.
Im like, This is math.
We dont talk about, say, Tina Bell.
The story of rock and roll is limited to the people who get to do the telling.
I thought about this as I rewatched the Buddy Guy episode recently.
Its a history of American music not the whole story, but its a big part of it.
I often wonder, Is that my next book?
Is that my podcast?
I do believe in the lineage of music.
The evolution of American music, the evolution of instrumentation and technology and creativity.
The purpose of life is to grow.
I still believe this fucking crazy world of music we live in now is a community.
Years ago, I was hell-bent on starting my own internet.
I was out of my fucking mind.
Im going to start my own music channel.
I had this idea that music programming shouldnt just be videos.
We sat down for dinner and she was like, I can get you a channel.
Im like, Really?
Then she was like, You really want to be a TV executive?
I was like, No, fuck that.
I said, Hey, did you watch the Emmys?
She goes, Yeah.
I said, How was it?
Then I realized I havent watched television in like five fucking years.
Even if I were to watch a show, Id have no fucking clue whats going on.
I know everybody that sold their fucking publishing rights.
Have you thought about it much?
Would you ever consider it?I understand why some bands would.
Maybe thats a reason.
I havent considered it because were still making records and writing songs.
Im sure Ill get there someday, where Ill be like, Fuck touring.
Just take it, man.
Ill sell it to you.
Give me a fucking number.
Krist is one of the most compassionate, loving, and smart people that I know.
I can assure you that Novoselic is not a Trump lover.
In February, you expressed interest in reunitingThem Crooked Vulturesfor another album.
Have you been followingJosh Hommeschild-abuse allegationsthis month?I cant talk about that, brother.
I cant talk about that.
Thats a hard no right there.
Would you cut your hair again?Abso-fucking-lutely.
My kids are like, Dad, dont.
Do not cut your fucking hair.
I had this routine where Id shave it with aNo.
7, and then Id let it grow out.
But I eventually stopped.
Which is your favorite Grammy?Oh, come on.
Thats like picking a child.
Three of my favorite people all together won one Grammy, that was pretty cool.
When I listen to aMitskirecord, Im like, This blows my mind.
Orthe Bird and the Bee.
I think theyre the best band in the world.
Thats our producer, Greg Kurstin.
Its Greg and Inara, and they write songs nobody else could possibly write.
The Japanese punk-rock band Otoboke Beaver.
Watch this video for a song called Dont Light My Fire.
Itll blow your mind, dude.
Its the most fucking intense shit youve ever seen.
So of course its out there.
Is it going to be center stage at the Grammys next year?
I think that youre trying to integrate work and family more boldly than a lot of your peers are.
And I didnt realize this until the 90s.
I grew up listening to X.
They came through Ohio, where my grandmother used to live.
Her family is from Ohio.
In the local newspaper, it said, Los Angeles punk legends X, playing in Ohio.
It listed their names.
The drummers name was D.J.
They all had punk-rock names.
John Doe, Billy Zoom, Exene, D.J.
I had the records.
She cuts out the clipping, sends it to me.
Bonebrakes name and says, You might be related to this boy.
Then it clicked: My fucking grandmothers maiden name is Bonebrake.
Thats his real name.
They settled in the Pennsylvania-Ohio region.
They were like fucking Pennsylvania Dutch, horses and flat hats and shit.
I finally got to meet him, and it turns out were actually fucking related to each other.
But anyway, yes.
Shes the best college DJ youve ever heard in your fucking life.
Thegentleman from the cover ofNevermindrecently came forward with a lawsuit alleging that it is child pornography.
I feel the same way most people do in that I have to disagree.
Thats all Ill say.
I can think of, like, four times that he re-created that photo.
If its a problem, why keep revisiting it every five years?Listen, hes got aNevermindtattoo.
I was just trying to play the drums, man.
I was just trying to get through the show!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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