Mojo
Grooving on Led Zep, dossing with mud-wrestlers, he joined the "fucking dark" world of Nirvana a goofy naif and left it a rock star. "I never didn't want it," says dave Grohl. "I just never expected it."
I have it on good authority that you have John Bonham's runic symbol
from Led Zeppelin IV tattooed on your body...
Well, I didn't want to get a tattoo of Tweety Pie
smoking a joint (laughs). When I was 15 or 16, my
friend got one of the first CD players, and we
listened to Houses Of The Holy a thousand fuckin'
times, listening dose for the squeak in the bass
drum pedal! I was just amazed by Bonham's sense
of feel. He's still the best rock drummer in the
world, no one can touch him. He was such an
inspiration. Before that, when I was 12 or 13, I gave
myself a Black Flag tattoo, prison style, with a
needle and pen ink. (Reveals three puny, faded green
bars on his left forearm)
There's only three bars there. The Black Flag logo has four bars.
It hurt.
Thirteen is young for your first tattoo;
were you also an early starter, in years, when
it came to concert-going?
My parents took me to the Ohio State Fair when
I was two years old, in 1971; The Jackson 5 performed, but I don't remember anything about
it. I didn't grow up going to "rock concerts". I
saw [Chicago post-punk quartet] Naked Raygun
back in 1982, at the Cubby Bear in Chicago. I
was 13. I loved the intimacy of it; I talked to the
singer and I jumped on someone's head and I
felt completely at ease with the band and the
audience. It was just a bunch of people having
a good time. That's where my perspective on
rock comes from.
  The first time I went to a "big" concert was
the Monsters Of Rock in 1987, at a stadium in
DC: Kingdom Come, Metallica, Dokken,
Scorpions and Van Halen. After five years of
going to see Bad Brains, MDC and Slayer at
smaller dub gigs, seeing this stadium gig and
standing far enough from the stage that it was
taking four seconds for the sound of the snare
drum to hit me made no sense at all.
You always loved drums, then?
I remember being inspired by Edgar Winter's
Frankenstein. Up until that point I would just
listen to whatever my parents or my sister were
listening to, the West Side Story soundtrack,
Carly Simon and The Beatles. But when I heard
Frankenstein, I thought, "Wow, everything
about this song stands out, the riffs, the keyboards, and particularly the drums."
  That summer, one of my cousins gave me
Rush's 2112, and I don't know how, but I could
tell what each individual piece of the drum kit
was doing; I knew which sound was the hi-hat,
which sound was the ride cymbal, and so on.
  I learned about drums by setting my pillows
up on my bed and on the floor, and beating
along on them with these big fucking marching
sticks I stole from a friend. The house I grew up
in is really small, and I couldn't afford a drum set until I was 17 - I'd wait until the drummer in
my band went home after practice and play on
his kit.
Did you ever sense a conflict in loving both old school rock and punk?
My first punk rock moment was going to see
the AC/DC movie, Let There Be Rock. It was the
first time I'd felt that energy, like I just wanna
fuckin' break something, I'm so excited that I'm
losing my mind! It was dirty and sweaty, fuckin'
beautiful. I liked the more aggressive side of
things. So hardcore and punk rock and thrash
metal were like a dream come true, pushing
that energy to an extreme. The thing I didn't
like about a lot of rock music was the superhuman pretension - at an early age I was suspicious of it, cynical. I had a Kiss poster, but I
didn't like their music, I liked them as comic
book characters. But I also had an AC/DC
poster, Malcolm Young wearing jeans and a T-
shirt, hasn't taken a shower all week, drunk and
just fuckin' playing music for the sake of playing
music. I thought, "I wanna be that guy."
You grew up in Northern Virginia, spitting
distance from Washington DC. Did you get to
experience DC's legendary hardcore scene,
bands like Bad Brains and Minor Threat?
When I discovered punk rock, the only punk
rockers I'd seen were on Quincy ['70s TV series
featuring Jack Klugman's titular pathologist,
and a lot of genuine punk extras]. The punk
rock kids out here in LA realised they could get
extra work for money, fuckin' went for it, like
Pat Smear [former Germs/Nirvana/Foo Fighters
guitarist]. When I found out that hardcore was
'hatched' right in my backyard, I flipped out.
And it took me a while to work out how to find
that scene, because it wasn't in nightclubs, it
was in community centres and Knights Of
Columbus halls. Most of the 'scene' came from
DC and Maryland, not from Virginia, which was
right there on the Mason/Dixon line. Though I wasn't raised a complete redneck, I grew up
with duck-hunting and pick-up trucks. The DC
hardcore scene was almost impenetrable - it
was hard to get into that scene as an outsider. It
took me about a year before I finally found it.
And then I couldn't get out of it.
After playing in smaller punk rock bands, you
joined DC hardcore legends Scream in the '80s.
I first saw them in '83; I was still a kid, and they
were so fuckin' good. And when I discovered
they were from Virginia they became my heroes.
I walked into our local music store one day to
buy some drumsticks, and on the bulletin board
it said, "Scream: Looking for drummer." I called
them up, lied about my age - I was 17 - and
Franz [Stahl, guitarist] reluctantly invited me to
meet him at a basement underneath a head
shop in Virginia, He was waiting there with his
little practice amp set up, He says, "OK, you
wanna play some covers, some Zeppelin or
AC/DC?" And I said, "No, let's play some Scream,"
And we ran through the guys' whole fuckin'
catalogue, note for note, front to back. He was
really surprised, and they asked me to join.
I freaked out, I didn't know if it was time for
me to give up high school and do what I really
wanted to do or not. But I saw Scream play
about a month later and realised, I had to be in
the band. And I dropped out of high school,
because I now had a tour coming up in two
months of the South-east, then we were doing
Europe in the fall. I thought, "I've never trav-
elled further than Ohio."
So you joined what author Michael Azzerad described as the Hardcore Underground Railroad.
I fell in love with that scene because it was such
a strong community: all fanzines and tape-trading and independent booking agents,
stuffing your own sleeves, making your own singles, screening your own T-shirts, stuffing your equipment in a van and sleeping on people's floors. The motive of hardcore was so
pure. I didn't even care if I ate, I just wanted to
play. It was such a beautiful thing, like living in a
commune.
  But Scream had had a rough ride. We'd never
come home with any money, but while we were
on tour, we'd get somewhere to sleep, people
would feed us, we'd maybe get a couple of beers
at every show. And that was fine, it was enough.
But then people would quit because they
couldn't take it any more, some people started
getting fucked up on drugs. I started thinking
working at the Furniture Warehouse wasn't so
bad - you can only eat so much Taco Bell.
  We hit Los Angeles on our last tour in 1990,
and our bass player quit, so we ended
up staying with the guitarist's sister in
Laurel Canyon. She lived with two mud
wrestlers at the Hotel Tropicana, so we
were surrounded by beautiful girls, we
could drink for free at the Tropicana...
It was terrible (laughs)... because we
didn't have the band. If we'd had the
music, it would have been heaven.
  The Melvins came to town, so I
hooked up with my friend Buzz
Osborne who said, "Have you ever
heard of Nirvana? Because those guys
saw you play in San Francisco, and
they're looking for a drummer, and
they were real impressed with your
drumming, call them."
  We talked about music, we loved everything
from Neil Young to Public Enemy, from Black
Flag to Black Sabbath. Right off the bat, it
seemed pretty compatible. So I went out to the
record store and bought a copy of Bleach, and
played it 10 times and went to U-Haul and
bought a big fucking cardboard box. I dismantled my drum kit and telescoped them into a
shell, threw my duffle bag in it and duct taped
it up, and just flew up to Seattle.
When I showed up there with my one box,
nothing else, I was greeted by Chris and Kurt. I really only knew them from the cover of Bleach,
and they looked like these dirty fuckin' biker
children. I didn't expect them to be as sweet as
they were; Chris and Kurt were both the
sweetest people in the world, they wouldn't
hurt a fly. We jumped into their old van, went
up to Tacoma, to Chris's house, and I started
living there.
You were writing and recording music of your
own now, such as the Pocketwatch cassette
with Barrett Jones on Simple Machines, in
1992. And one of those songs, Friend Of A
Friend, is revived on the new album.
I'd written songs before, for Scream, and in my
friend's basement on a 4-track, but that was the
first time I'd written something that was so
naked. I wrote that song when I first moved up
with Nirvana. After living with Chris in Tacoma
for a month and a half, I moved down to
Olympia with Kurt. We lived in this tiny
apartment that was just an absolute fucking
dumpster, and I was on a sleeping schedule
where I would go to sleep about 6.30 in the
morning, and wake up maybe around 4.30 in
the afternoon, just as the sun was going down.
We were doing a lot of rehearsing in this
barn out in Tacoma, and we had no television.It was just a small stack of albums and a 4-track,
cigarette butts and corn-dog sticks everywhere;
my home was the couch, which was about four-
and-a-half-feet long, and I'm six-feet tall - it was
just a fuckin' nightmare. I wrote the song one
night and recorded it while Kurt was sleeping. I
was just writing about these people I'd just met,
myself included, because I had a lot of time to
sit around and think.
Was there a single moment when the mania that surrounded Nirvana, following the success of Nevermind, started to get out of control?
It wasn't until I came home and had a gold record and we were on Saturday Night Live that I realised, "OK, now this is fuckin' crazy." But it still seemed some what natural at that point, because we weren't playing stadiums, we were still
playing places that held 2,000 people. It
hadn't gotten to that Monsters Of Rock,
four seconds before the snare hits the
audience level yet.
  The thing I started to notice was,
people were starting to pull. People
would pull you to an interview, or pull
you into the dressing room, and people
would push you on-stage. And that's
when I thought, "OK, this is getting a
little weird." There were times where I'd
excuse myself from an interview to have a piss,
and have an extreme anxiety attack, like, "Why
am I so stressed, so nervous?" I was really
happy, I didn't feel down or depressed, I felt
elated. But I was pretty overwhelmed. And if
you think about it, I was only in that band for
three-and-a-half years, so everything happened
over such a short period of time. A lot of it's
kind of a blur.
You were three kids from the underground
punk scene; you were hardly prepared
for what followed...
I think that's a cop-out. Anyone could handle
what I do, it's a fucking luxury. I never didn't
want it. I just never expected it. We never had
that world domination career ambition,
because our kind of music made it impossible
that we could be the biggest band in the world.
People get fucked up when they have that
insane ambition. If music's not enough, not its
own reward, don't do it. When I worked at
Furniture Warehouse and only played music at
the weekends, that was my vacation; those
weekends meant so much to me. And I still
have that feeling.
I've heard stories of drunken Queen-themed
karaoke parties and other shenanigans on
the Nirvana tour bus.
People have this idea that the band travelled
with a black cloud following us everywhere we
went, and it's absolutely not true. The memories that I revisit are great; we had so many
fucking good times, good laughs. A lot of it was
dangerous, a lot of it was fucking dark. But not
all of it. The way the whole thing ended leaves
everyone with a little bit of the black cloud, but
honestly, it was so much fun.
You shied away from music, immediately
after Kurt's death.
How can I explain it? If you have someone that's
close to you, a family member or someone that
you love, and they disappear or pass away...
Imagine walking into their bedroom full of
things every day. That's exactly how playing
music felt to me, because that was my whole
world. It was difficult to listen to music, whether
it was Ry Cooder's soundtrack to Paris, Texas, or
[Metallica's] Ride The Lightning. I had to disconnect. And I couldn't imagine getting up there
and playing the drums with someone, and not
thinking about Nirvana. I think about Nirvana
every time I sit up to play the drums.
You received a postcard from Seven Year Bitch, who'd just lost their guitarist Stefanie Sargent to heroin, that read: "We know what you are going through. The desire for music is gone now, but it will return. Don't worry." What followed next?
I worked with Mike Watt, for his solo album,
Ball-Hog Or Tugboat? He's so inspirational; he's
a 'lifer', he does it because he loves it, and he'll
never stop. Then Tom Petty called and asked
me to join the Heartbreakers for their SNL appearance. That guy's
one of America's greatest songwriters. Within two days I felt like a member
of that band. They were the sweetest, most
welcoming people I'd
ever met in my life. And
we sounded good. I just
did that one performance
played two songs, but it
was fuckin' great. I never
asked Tom why he chose
me; I think he said soml
thing about his teenage
daughter being a Nirvana
fan and making him do it.
Was this the first
example of Dave Grohl
the Hardest Working
Man In Showbusiness
Drumming for Killing
Joke, Queens Of The
Stone Age, Garbage, Cat
Power and Nine Inch
Nails; your own all-star
Probot project...
It seems like after that, the
ball started rolling, and it hasn't stopped ever
since. And that was 11 years ago. There's
nothing I'd rather do. Imagine, when a friend of
yours who's in one of the coolest bands calls
you up and asks if you want to be on the new
record. What, are you gonna say no?
Is there anyone you're still itching to play
with? MOJO could hook you up...
The next project that I'm trying to initiate
involves me on drums, Josh Homme on guitar,
and John Paul Jones playing bass. That's the
next album. That wouldn't suck.
Back when you were working on the first, self-
titled record, did you have even an inkling of
the success Foo Fighters would achieve over
the next decade?
Honestly, that album just came from melodies
and demos that I'd recorded on an 8-track in
my house, which I'd been doing since Nirvana
had been a band. A lot of those songs were
written while I was still in Nirvana, or just before
Nirvana. The idea wasn't to form a new band
and start over; it was to go down to the studio,
down the road, and book six days, which is the
most time I'd ever spent recording music of my
own. To me it seemed so professional. I wanted
to start a label on my own, release the album
with no names on it, no photos, call it Foo
Fighters so people thought it was a band, kinda
like Stewart Copeland did with the Klark Kent
record. The intention was to make music, and
knowing I was still in the shadow of this thing
that was Nirvana, in order for people to be
objective, it had to be completely anonymous.
That was the original idea.
Now, of course, the Foo Fighters are a
"proper" rock band, one of the world's
biggest, and you can do pretty much
whatever you wish. Is there anything left for
you personally to achieve?
Every album opens the door to whatever happens next. Every record we've made I always
imagined being the last. I can't imagine being
any more blessed than I already am. But, for
once in my life, I've made a record I don't want
to be the last. Whether it's the sheer volume of
music we've recorded, or exploring those two
dynamics to their extremes, it's opening doors I
can see through for 10 more years. And that's
never happened.
Did last year's With The Lights Out box set
mark the end of the Nirvana legacy?
That box set was pretty full; I think there's
maybe some demo tapes hanging around from
Kurt's house that we haven't heard. But there
aren't many Nirvana outtakes. We'd go into the
studio with 12 songs, record them, and that
would be the record. But I'm sure they'll find
something to dredge up and slap on a disc
somehow...
When you think about Nirvana now, what's
your take on the band and what you
experienced?
To me, to this day, when I think of Nirvana, it
doesn't seem that different to me to Scream,
or Dain Bramage, or Freakbaby or any of the
other bands I was in as a kid. Some of them
might get platinum albums, some of them
might work at a Furniture Warehouse on the
weekend, but they're just bands, they're just
people. Do I imagine the Pope is an angel sent
from heaven? No, he's just a human being. Do
I imagine Jimmy Page spawned from a jackal
in Egypt? No, he's just a great guy, a human
being, and he got to play music. It's hard for
me to think of things in terms of cultural relevance, because I don't have that perspective
on it. It's hard to be that objective, when you
were in the band. Honestly, it was just a band.
  (Laughs) Admittedly, it's hard for me to
accept that Led Zeppelin were 'just a band'. But
I can say it about Nirvana.