On the 30th anniversary of Nirvana’s Nevermind, read our new cover story, where Dave Grohl opens up about Kurt Cobain and much more:
to ease up on his manic coffee consumption, and he still doesn’t sleep much. Five hours a night, maybe, which qualifies him as a “total fuckin’ insomniac.” He just can’t wait to get back to his waking life, is the thing. There’s always some kind of project he’s excited about: a documentary series he’s directing, aalbum, a book, a tour, sometimes all of the above. He thinks of his schoolteacher mom grading papers late into the night, and gets to work.
When Grohl was 18, he dropped out of high school to become the drummer for the Washington, D.C., hardcore band Scream, which promptly whisked him away from the D.C. suburbs. His dad, James Harper Grohl, a journalist, speechwriter, conservative Republican, and accomplished flute player who split with Dave’s mom when he was six, responded to his son’s life choice by disowning him. Then he showed up in a new car that Dave suspects he paid for with a liquidated college fund.
Grohl has spent a substantial portion of his 52 years on the road, onstage, and it all creeps into his subconscious. “I’ve always had these live-performance anxiety dreams,” he says. “They’re usually Nirvana-related. Like, Kurt’s still alive. And we’re doing a show, and I’m so excited that people get to see this once again. And I walk onstage. And my drumsticks are the size of telephone poles. And then the audience just kind of begins to scatter.
Just ask the Foos’ Smear, who started out as guitarist for storied L.A. punks the Germs. In 1980, Germs frontman Darby Crash died of a deliberate heroin overdose, and Smear spent a decade hanging out in L.A., hitchhiking around, playing some music, working as a TV and movie extra. In 1993, Kurt Cobain asked him to flesh out Nirvana’s sound on guitar, and Smear toured with the band for eight months. Then Cobain, too, was gone.
“The Gen X aesthetic was kind of based on childhood dysfunction,” Dave says. “I didn’t necessarily have dysfunction. I was raised in a household where I was allowed to become myself. Had I lived with my father on Capitol Hill, there might have been more tension. But I can honestly say I really liked my childhood. I didn’t have much trouble, other than being a fucking idiot and getting terrible grades and not going to school.
Every single member of the Foo Fighters is a dad, a fact they embrace and carefully plan their schedules around. Smear, so unimpeachably cool that he was one of the zonked-out kids in Penelope Spheeris’ infamous 1981 punk documentary,, loves it all as much as anyone. “At my kid’s school,” says Smear, “and at all of our kids’ schools, there’s always dad bands, right? I always laugh: ‘I’m already in one. I’m in a better one! I’m not doing your dad band!’ ”Grohl says, cracking up.
In the beginning, there was just Studio 606, next door, which he started building in 2004. The halls there are filled with memorabilia, including the actual ray gun from the Foos’ first album cover, aplatinum record, and some prized rock photos: Dave is particularly fond of a Ross Halfin picture of Eddie Van Halen with Brian May and Tony Iommi in 1978.
At a birthday party last night, a musician who plays with Cyrus and Taylor Swift told Grohl about Swift’s current project of rerecording her entire catalog to foil the venture capitalists who bought the rights to the originals. Grohl is deeply impressed. “Like, fuck yeah, girl,” Grohl says. “Hell hath no fury. Now I’m scared of her! I would be so nerdy and into it. I think it’s so much fun.
The real answer is that it wasn’t easy, especially at the beginning. The Foo Fighters’ first drummer was William Goldsmith, recruited by Grohl, along with Mendel, after he watched the pair perform with their band Sunny Day Real Estate, who were, conveniently enough, already in the process of breaking up.
“We had a big argument because I was being a fucking smartass,” Hawkins says. “And he just fucking said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna tell you right now. This is how it is. It’s my fucking band. If you don’t like it, fucking beat it.’ And I went, ‘All right, I quit.
“Running back and forth on the side of the stage, you know, it doesn’t get any easier,” he says. “There are certain muscles that are only used when running around belting out. It’s like doing sit-ups and singing ‘Who Are You’ for three hours. It’s a lot. So you throw your neck out.” He has no particular exercise regime, and notes that Mick Jagger told him he rented a dance studio during the pandemic to stay in shape; maybe he could get his own studio “and just run around screaming.
In his book, Grohl talks about watching Cobain’s Converse-clad foot, waiting for him to smash his distortion pedal and switch into the loud part. “Just before he stomped on the button,” he writes, “I would blast into a single-stroke snare roll with all of my might, like a fuse burning fast into the heart of a bomb, signaling the change.”
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