Dave Grohl

• 1. Introduction

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  Dave Grohl, born David Eric Grohl on the 14th of January 1969, once sat at number one on the modern rock charts for 17 of 18 consecutive weeks. The run stretched from the 26th of October 2002 to the 1st of March 2003. He managed it as a member of three different bands, drumming in two of them and fronting the third. At one point, a song of his simply replaced another of his own at the top.

  How does a teenager obsessed with loud, fast records end up there? What does a drummer do when the band that made him famous ends without warning? And why does a man with a hugely successful group of his own keep turning up behind other people's drum kits? The answers begin with a boy and a summer trip to Illinois.

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• 2. Self-Taught Teenager

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  At 13, Grohl spent a summer at his cousin Tracey's house in Evanston, Illinois, and came home a punk. Tracey took him and his sister Lisa, who was three years older, to shows by a variety of punk bands. His first concert was Naked Raygun at The Cubby Bear in Chicago in 1982. Back home, the two siblings bought copies of Maximumrocknroll and tried to work out the scene. In Grohl's words, "From then on we were totally punk."

  Grohl was born in Warren, Ohio, to a teacher named Virginia Jean and a newswriter named James Harper Grohl. His father was a journalist and served as special assistant to U.S. Senator Robert Taft Jr. He was known as a political observer who could call major elections with uncanny accuracy. The family later moved to Springfield, Virginia. When Grohl was seven his parents divorced, and his mother raised him from then on. At 12 he started on guitar, grew tired of lessons, and taught himself instead. He headed toward music that was faster, louder and darker, while Lisa drifted toward new wave. They met in the middle with Bowie and Siouxsie and the Banshees.

  At Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia, Grohl was elected vice president as a freshman. He used the post to play snatches of songs by Circle Jerks and Bad Brains over the intercom before his morning announcements. His mother then moved him to Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, because his cannabis use was dragging down his grades. He stayed two years, beginning with a repeat of his first year. After that he transferred again, to Annandale High School.

  All the while he played in local bands. In one called Freak Baby he was the guitarist, until the group fired its bass player and reshuffled its lineup. Grohl switched to drums, and the reconstituted band renamed itself Mission Impossible. It later rebranded as Fast. When Fast broke up, he joined the hardcore punk band Dain Bramage in December 1985.

  No teacher ever showed him the drums. He learned by listening to Rush and punk records. Rush drummer Neil Peart was an early hero, and Grohl has said that hearing the album 2112 at age eight changed the direction of his life. During his developing years he named John Bonham as his greatest influence. He eventually had Bonham's three-rings symbol tattooed on his right shoulder.

  Much of his education happened at the 9:30 Club, a venue in Washington, D.C. In April 2010 he said he had been there hundreds of times. He was always excited to arrive and always disappointed when it closed. He spent his teenage years at the club and "saw some shows that changed my life."

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• 3. From Scream to Nirvana

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  Gwar, a shock rock band, was looking for a drummer when a teenage Grohl in Washington, D.C. briefly considered joining. Instead, at age 17, he auditioned for a local band called Scream after its drummer, Kent Stax, left. He lied and claimed to be older. To his surprise, the band asked him to join, so he dropped out of high school in his junior year. "I was 17 and extremely anxious to see the world, so I did it," he said.

  Over four years Grohl toured heavily with Scream. He played on two studio albums, No More Censorship and Fumble, and he wrote and sang the song "Gods Look Down" during that run. A live recording of the band's show in Alzey, Germany, on the 4th of May 1990 was later released by Tobby Holzinger as Your Choice Live Series Vol.10. On a 1987 tour stop in Toronto, Grohl drummed for Iggy Pop at a CD release party held at El Mocambo.

  While playing in Scream, Grohl became a fan of the Melvins and eventually befriended them. During a 1990 West Coast stop, Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne brought two friends to a Scream show. They were Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana. Grohl told Q in October 2010 that he remembered thinking, "What? That's Nirvana? Are you kidding?" On their record cover, he said, the pair had looked like "psycho lumberjacks."

  Later in 1990, Scream unexpectedly disbanded in the middle of a tour after bassist Skeeter Thompson departed. Grohl phoned Osborne for advice. Osborne told him that Nirvana was looking for a drummer and passed along the phone numbers of Cobain and Novoselic. They invited Grohl to Seattle to audition, and he soon joined.

  Nirvana already had demos for the follow-up to its 1989 debut album, Bleach. The band had also spent time with producer Butch Vig in Wisconsin. The plan had been to release the new album on Sub Pop, but the demos drew heavy interest elsewhere. Grohl spent his first months in the band traveling to labels to discuss deals, and Nirvana signed with DGC Records.

  In early 1991 the band entered Sound City Studios in Los Angeles to record Nevermind. The album, released that year, exceeded all expectations and became a worldwide commercial success. Through it all, Grohl was quietly recording songs of his own.

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• 4. Writing Alongside Cobain

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  Pocketwatch, a cassette issued in 1992 on the indie label Simple Machines, carried Grohl's own songs under the name Late! One of them was "Color Pictures of a Marigold." In his first months in Olympia, Washington, Cobain overheard Grohl working on it, and the two developed it together. Nirvana rerecorded the song during the In Utero sessions and released it as a B-side on the "Heart-Shaped Box" single. It was retitled "Marigold."

  Grohl said in a 2014 episode of Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways that Cobain once reacted to a demo of "Alone + Easy Target" by kissing him. Cobain's enthusiasm showed up elsewhere too. Grohl contributed the riff for "Scentless Apprentice." In a 1993 interview with MTV, Cobain admitted he first thought the riff was "kind of boneheaded." He was gratified by how the song developed. A demo on the Nirvana box set With the Lights Out captures part of that process.

  Cobain also said he was excited by the prospect of Novoselic and Grohl contributing more to the band's songwriting. That same year, 1992, Grohl played drums on King Buzzo, a Kiss-styled solo EP by Buzz Osborne. He was credited as "Dale Nixon." Greg Ginn had adopted that pseudonym to play bass on Black Flag's My War.

  Before Nirvana's 1994 European tour, the band booked time at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle to work on demos. Cobain was absent for most of the three-day session. Novoselic and Grohl worked on demos of their own songs instead. They completed several of Grohl's, including "Exhausted," "Big Me," "February Stars" and "Butterflies." All four would later become Foo Fighters songs.

  Cobain arrived on the third day, and the band recorded a demo of "You Know You're Right." It was Nirvana's final studio recording. Cobain died by suicide on the 5th of April 1994. Twenty years later, on the 10th of April 2014, Grohl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Nirvana.

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• 5. Starting Foo Fighters

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  County Kerry, Ireland, was where Grohl went after Cobain's death. He retreated for several months, unsure of what to do next. In a 2022 interview he described winding along beautiful country roads, hoping to disappear and sort out his life. Then he came upon a hitchhiker wearing a Kurt Cobain T-shirt. To Grohl, that meant he could not outrun what had happened and had to push through toward some kind of continuation. He flew home and immediately started recording the songs that would become Foo Fighters.

  In October 1994 he booked time at Robert Lang Studios and quickly recorded a fifteen-track demo. He played every instrument himself. The only exception was a single guitar part on "X-Static," played by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs.

  Grohl still wondered whether his future lay in drumming for other bands. In November 1994 he took a brief turn with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, including a performance on Saturday Night Live. He declined an invitation to become Petty's permanent drummer. Pearl Jam also floated his name as a replacement for drummer Dave Abbruzzese, and he played a song or two with the band at three shows on its March 1995 Australian tour. By then Pearl Jam had already settled on Jack Irons, formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  The demo drew interest from major labels, and Gary Gersh signed it. Gersh had been Nirvana's A&R representative before becoming president of Capitol Records. Grohl did not want the project to look like the start of a solo career, so he recruited a band. Pat Smear, a former member of the Germs and a touring guitarist for Nirvana, came aboard. So did William Goldsmith on drums and Nate Mendel on bass, both from the recently disbanded Sunny Day Real Estate. Grohl and Novoselic discussed Novoselic joining and decided against it. Grohl said working together again would have felt "really natural," but it would have been uncomfortable for the other members and added pressure on Grohl.

  In early 1995 Foo Fighters played their first US tour, the Ring Spiel Tour, opening for Mike Watt. Grohl had drummed on two tracks of Watt's 1994 album Ball-Hog or Tugboat? Eddie Vedder also played in Watt's supporting band on that tour. Rob Schnapf and Tom Rothrock remixed the demo, and it came out in July 1995 as the self-titled debut album Foo Fighters. Between tours the band cut a cover of Gary Numan's "Down in the Park."

  After touring for more than a year, Grohl went home and made the soundtrack to the 1997 movie Touch. He played all the instruments and vocals himself, apart from a few guests. They included Louise Post of Veruca Salt on the title track and John Doe of X on "This Loving Thing (Lynn's Song)." Barrett Jones, who co-produced, played keyboards on one track. Grohl finished the recording in two weeks and then went straight back to work on the next Foo Fighters album.

  Tension soon surfaced between Grohl and drummer Goldsmith. Goldsmith recalled, "Dave had me do 96 takes of one song, and I had to do 13 hours' worth of takes on another one." He also believed that Capitol and producer Gil Norton wanted Grohl to play drums on the record. With the album seemingly finished, Grohl took the rough mixes home to Virginia and found he was unhappy with them. Alone at a studio in Washington, D.C., he wrote and recorded "Walking After You" and the hit single "Everlong."

  The session inspired him to move the band to Los Angeles, without Goldsmith's knowledge, and re-record most of the album with himself on drums. Goldsmith announced his departure afterward. Taylor Hawkins, formerly the drummer for Alanis Morissette, replaced him. Grohl later expressed regret, saying part of him wondered whether he was "finished playing the drums yet."

  The album came out in May 1997 as The Colour and the Shape. Its singles included "Everlong," "My Hero" and "Monkey Wrench," and it made the band a staple of rock radio. That September, Smear left, saying he needed to settle down after a lifetime of touring. Grohl's former Scream bandmate Franz Stahl took his place but departed before the third album. Chris Shiflett, a touring guitarist, would become a full member during the recording of One by One.

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• 6. Studios and a Throne

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  The basement of Grohl's home in Alexandria, Virginia, became a recording studio, and the 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose was made there. It followed the band's exit from Capitol and from its former president, Gary Gersh. Grohl called the experience "intoxicating at times" because the members were left to their own devices. Finishing before they had a new label meant the record was "purely our creation."

  In 2000, Queen guitarist Brian May added guitar to a Foo Fighters cover of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar," a song the band had earlier released as a B-side. The friendship led to Grohl and Taylor Hawkins being asked to induct Queen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001. They joined May and Queen drummer Roger Taylor to play "Tie Your Mother Down," with Grohl standing in on vocals for Freddie Mercury. May later played on "Tired of You" on the ensuing Foo Fighters album.

  Near the end of 2001, Foo Fighters spent four months in the studio on their fourth album. When the sessions ended, Grohl accepted an invitation to join Queens of the Stone Age and helped record their 2002 album Songs for the Deaf. He can be seen drumming in the video for "No One Knows." After a brief tour through North America, Britain and Japan, he felt rejuvenated. He called the band members back and had them re-record the whole album at his Virginia studio. That became One by One.

  In Your Honor arrived on the 14th of June 2005. Before starting it, the band spent almost a year moving Grohl's home studio into a new facility called Studio 606, in a warehouse in Northridge, Los Angeles. The album was a departure, with one rock disc and one acoustic disc. Guests included John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Josh Homme and Norah Jones. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace followed on the 25th of September 2007, recorded in three months between March and June, with "The Pretender" as its first single.

  On the 3rd of November 2009 the band released its first Greatest Hits collection, with 16 tracks. It included a previously unreleased acoustic version of "Everlong" and two new songs produced by Nevermind's Butch Vig. Grohl felt the release was too early and said it "can look like an obituary." He did not think the band had written its best hits yet. Wasting Light, released on the 12th of April 2011, backed him up as the band's first album to reach number one in the United States. Sonic Highways followed on the 10th of November 2014 and reached number two. It holds eight songs, each inspired by the musical history and culture of a different US city, which Grohl researched himself.

  On the 12th of June 2015, Grohl fell off the stage while playing in Gothenburg, Sweden, and broke his leg. He left briefly, returned with a cast, and finished the concert. The band then canceled the rest of its European tour. To save the North American tour, he designed a large elevated throne that let him perform with the broken leg. It was unveiled at a concert in Washington, D.C., on the 4th of July. The video screens showed the crowd footage of his fall and X-rays of the leg, and the tour was rebranded the Broken Leg Tour. Grohl lent the throne to Axl Rose in 2016 after Rose broke his foot. In 2021 he lent it to Darin Wall of the Seattle metal band Greyhawk, who had been shot in the leg.

  Concrete and Gold came out on the 15th of September 2017 and became the band's second album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. After the tour, the band took a break. Medicine at Midnight was released on the 5th of February 2021 after pandemic delays and debuted at number three. Taylor Hawkins died on the 25th of March 2022, and the band canceled the tour for that album. But Here We Are appeared on the 2nd of June 2023 and is dedicated to Hawkins and to Grohl's mother, Virginia, both of whom died in 2022. A twelfth studio album, Your Favorite Toy, was released on the 24th of April 2026, preceded by the single "Of All People" on the 10th of April.

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• 7. Drummer for Hire

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  In 1993 and 1994, Grohl played drums in the Backbeat Band, assembled to recreate the Beatles' early years for the movie Backbeat. The group was an alternative rock supergroup. Its other members were Greg Dulli, indie producer Don Fleming, Mike Mills of R.E.M., Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum. In January 1997, he played a few songs with David Bowie at Bowie's 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden. Five years later he contributed guitar to a cover of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting For You" on Bowie's album Heathen.

  In the early 2000s, Grohl spent time in his basement studio writing and recording songs for Probot, a heavy metal project. He recruited favorite metal vocalists from the 1980s, including Lemmy of Motorhead, Conrad Lant of Venom, King Diamond, Scott Weinrich, Snake of Voivod and Max Cavalera of Sepultura. Probot released an album in 2004.

  Grohl also drummed on Killing Joke's second self-titled album in 2003. That surprised some Nirvana fans, because Nirvana had been accused of lifting the opening riff of "Come as You Are" from Killing Joke's 1984 song "Eighties." The dispute never produced a lasting rift. Foo Fighters had covered Killing Joke's "Requiem" in the late 1990s, and Killing Joke singer Jaz Coleman joined them for it at a show in New Zealand in 2003.

  Tenacious D's debut album in 2001 featured Grohl, and he appeared as a demon in the video for the lead single "Tribute." He played the devil in the duo's 2006 movie Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, singing in "Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown)," and drummed on their 2012 album Rize of the Fenix. Nine Inch Nails also called on him. He drummed on six tracks of their 2005 album With Teeth and played percussion on a seventh. He returned for "The Idea of You" on their 2016 EP Not the Actual Events.

  In June 2008, Paul McCartney invited Grohl to a concert at Anfield football stadium in Liverpool, one of the central events of the city's year as European Capital of Culture. Grohl sang backup vocals and played guitar on "Band on the Run." He played drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "I Saw Her Standing There." He later played drums on the latter with McCartney at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards.

  At 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief, McCartney joined Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear to perform "Cut Me Some Slack." It was widely regarded as a Nirvana reunion with McCartney standing in for Cobain. It was the first time in eighteen years the three had played together. The song was later recorded for the Sound City soundtrack.

  In July 2009, Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones formed the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. They played their first show on the 9th of August 2009 at Metro in Chicago. A surprise UK debut followed on the 26th of August 2009 at Brixton Academy in London, supporting the Arctic Monkeys. Their first album came out in the UK on the 16th of November 2009.

  Some calls were urgent. In October 2011, Grohl temporarily joined Cage the Elephant on tour after drummer Jared Champion's appendix burst. On the 6th of November 2013, he sat in with the Zac Brown Band at the Country Music Association Awards. He also produced their EP The Grohl Sessions, Vol. 1. For the Swedish metal band Ghost, he produced the EP If You Have Ghost and played on it. According to a member of Ghost, he has even appeared live with them in the same identity-concealing outfit the rest of the band wears.

  On the 25th of June 2022, Grohl duetted with Paul McCartney as McCartney headlined the Glastonbury Festival. It was his first performance since the death of Taylor Hawkins earlier that year.

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• 8. Beyond the Drum Kit

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  Between August and November 2020, Grohl took part in an online drum battle with ten-year-old drummer Nandi Bushell. She had posted covers of Nirvana and Foo Fighters songs on her YouTube channel and then challenged him to a contest. After they traded videos a few times, Grohl jokingly conceded victory and wrote and performed a song in her honor. On the 26th of August 2021, he invited her onstage at the L.A. Forum, where she played drums on "Everlong" to close the show. Videos of the battle drew tens of millions of views. In 2018, a ten-year-old named Collier Cash Rule got a similar invitation at a Kansas City concert. Grohl gave him his guitar, Rule played several Metallica songs, and Grohl sang a verse and the chorus of "Enter Sandman."

  Grohl began directing Foo Fighters music videos with "Monkey Wrench" in 1997. In 2013 he produced and directed Sound City, a documentary about the Van Nuys recording studio that closed its music operations in 2011. It was his feature-length directorial debut and premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. His eight-part series Sonic Highways, tracing the making of the album across eight American cities, premiered on HBO on the 17th of October 2014. What Drives Us, a feature-length documentary about van touring, was released on the 30th of April 2021. On the 5th of October 2021, Dey Street Books published his memoir, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music. He and the Foo Fighters starred as themselves in the comedy horror film Studio 666, and he developed a thrash metal record for its fictional band, Dream Widow.

  Television gave him a second stage. Since his first appearance in 1992, Grohl has been a musical guest on Saturday Night Live 15 times, more than any other musician. On the 20th of May 2015, David Letterman chose the Foo Fighters to play "Everlong" as the last musical guest on the final Late Show. Grohl also entered a drum-off with Animal on The Muppets and appeared on Sesame Street. He read a story based on the Beatles' "Octopus's Garden" as guest storyteller on CBeebies Bedtime Story. In March 2013 he gave a keynote speech at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, urging listeners to cherish their own voice.

  Some causes reached him personally. After the Beaconsfield mine collapse in Tasmania in May 2006, one of the two trapped miners asked for an iPod loaded with Foo Fighters' In Your Honor. Grohl sent a note of support. In October 2006 that miner joined him for a drink after an acoustic concert at the Sydney Opera House. Grohl then wrote the instrumental "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners," which features Kaki King and appears on Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.

  There is a cost to the life he chose. In a June 2011 interview he revealed that he was going deaf in his left ear after decades of stage work. In February 2022 on The Howard Stern Show he said his hearing loss affects his daily life and his playing. His tinnitus has forced him to read lips for about 20 years. He still refuses to wear in-ear monitors, because they remove "you from the natural atmosphere sound."

  Recognition has come in many forms. Rolling Stone ranked him the 27th best drummer of all time in 2016. In 2021 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame again, this time as a member of Foo Fighters. In 2024 he received the George and Ira Gershwin Award. Back in Warren, Ohio, where he was born, a downtown roadway is named David Grohl Alley, and in 2012 the city unveiled drumsticks weighing 409 kilograms that Guinness lists as the largest in the world.

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