by Dave Grohl
Though he was technically mind-boggling, I wasn’t so concerned with how he played what he played; I was more interested in why he played what he played. What was his intention? Why did his signature groove seem so much more natural than that of any other drummer, like the ocean tide, sometimes crashing against towering cliffs, other times gently lapping the shore? What was it about his feel that spoke to me? And did I have a feel of my own? I eventually deduced that this was the work of the universe, and I was going to need to get to the bottom of that question by offering myself up.
At this point in my life I was exploring mysticism and the notion that a person could become one with god or the Absolute, so I was open to investigating how that might happen (I was also exploring hallucinogens at the time), but I followed no particular creed in my selfish quest. And, though I understood the basic concept of organized religion, I wasn’t raised in a religious environment and would only go to church with my Episcopalian father once a year on Christmas Eve, when we would attend mass at DC’s historic St. John’s Church. I certainly connected with the spiritual aspect of it and found the ceremony to be beautiful and quite uplifting, but that particular set of beliefs had not been ingrained in me from an early age, so it all remained a mystery to me. It wasn’t until I was sent to a Catholic high school (for reform, not religion) that I studied the concept of faith and began to understand what it actually meant.
Among my numerous classes in Catholic religion, such as “Old Testament,” “New Testament,” and “Christian Scriptures,” there was one that I enjoyed the most, called “Understanding Your Faith.” More than just lists of psalms and verses to memorize, this was an exploration of the concept of faith, the unconditional belief in something that defies logic and guides your life. Now, that was something that I could relate to, though in a much different context. THERE WERE CERTAIN THINGS IN MY LIFE THAT I RELIED ON UNCONDITIONALLY AND IN WHICH I HAD UNWAVERING FAITH—THE LOVE OF MY MOTHER, MY LOVE FOR HER, AND THE LOVE THAT FILLED MY HEART WHEN I PLAYED MUSIC. And so, without the conventional structures and rules that usually went along with such things, I considered music my religion, the record store my church, the rock stars my saints, and their songs my hymns.
It was that unconditional faith that I meditated upon as I sat before the flickering candles of my punk rock tabernacle.
Was it witchcraft? I have attended a Wiccan ceremony and found it to be quite similar to my innocent teenage experiment all those years ago, but I can only call my little ceremony what it was to me at the time, an appeal to harness the power of the universe to achieve my greatest desire. It’s easy to chalk it all up to coincidence, but as I write this today, having tattooed both the three-circles logo and a gothic “606” into my skin, I have to think that I manifested my destiny that night, utilizing the Law of Attraction, calling upon the universe, tapping into a higher power, or whatever. I just know that today, the success I prayed for in my carport that night has found me.
Or maybe I sold my soul for rock and roll?
Part Two
The Buildup
Courtesy of the author’s personal archives
You’d Better Be Good
“Okay . . . so, you wanna play some Zeppelin or AC/DC or something?”
Hunched over in a chair positioned directly in front of my drum set was none other than the one and only Franz Stahl, legendary guitarist of DC’s coolest hardcore punk rock band, Scream. As a seventeen-year-old mega-fan I could barely contain my excitement, practically shaking on my drum stool while my callused hands gripped my splintered drumsticks in white-knuckled anticipation, dead-ready to jam with my personal hero. It was painfully clear that this otherworldly feeling was not mutual. Franz seemed about as enthusiastic for this audition as if it were a trip to the dentist for a double root canal.
“No, man . . . let’s do Scream songs!” I practically yelled. Somewhat shocked, he looked up from the guitar in his lap with his big blue eyes and asked, “Oh yeah? Which ones do you know?”
This was the moment I had been waiting for. I stared Franz straight in the eyes and, in my best Clint Eastwood–catchphrase tone, brazenly said, “I know them all . . .”
Soon the dingy, underlit basement of this Arlington, Virginia, head shop exploded in a deafening fury of wailing guitar and astronomical BPM. Franz and I blasted through their entire catalog, album after album, even playing tunes that hadn’t been released to the public yet (yes, I may have had a few bootlegs). With each song, I could see Franz’s mood lift, as I needed little to no instruction for any verse, chorus, or finale to guide me. He didn’t know that his songs had been burned into my memory. After all, barring my one lesson from a local jazz drummer (“You’re holding your sticks backward, David”), I’d basically learned to play the drums by listening to Scream.
My punk rock baptism had occurred just a few years before, and I had begun collecting records with the ravenous fervor of a crackhead in heat, spending all of my hard-earned money on any album that I could find in the hardcore section at Olsson’s Books and Records in Georgetown, one of the few local record stores that actually carried underground music. Every last penny of my Shakey’s pizza and landscaping salaries was spent amassing a collection of loud, fast, and beautifully primitive albums that I would excitedly purchase with crumpled bills and carefully counted coins, racing home to throw them on my turntable, inspecting every detail from the artwork to the credits as I played them on repeat at concert-level volume. My mother was a very tolerant woman, allowing me to listen to whatever music I pleased (even the occasional Satanic death metal band).
Scream were different, though. Their sense of musicality and dynamics was a bit deeper and wider than that of most other hardcore bands, dipping into classic rock, metal, ska, and even reggae with ease. More important, their songs were full of incredibly catchy melodies that seemed to awaken the Beatles fan in me, something that most other punk rock bands had to substitute with atonal noise out of sheer songwriting inability. Plus, their drummer, Kent Stax, was a rudimental force of nature. It was clear that he had a deeper knowledge of the drums than most self-taught punk rock drummers, as his speed and precision were virtually unmatched. Like he was Buddy Rich in Doc Martens and a leather jacket, you could tell the dude had practiced his paradiddles.
With my pillows and a pair of oversized marching band drumsticks, I would sit and play along to my Scream records until there was sweat literally dripping down my bedroom windows, doing my best to try to emulate Kent’s lightning-speed drumming, which was no easy task. I had no band of my own at the time, much less a drum set, but it didn’t matter. I could close my eyes and imagine in that moment that I was the drummer of Scream, thrashing away to my favorite songs as if they were my own.
Courtesy of Virginia Grohl’s personal archives
Having formed in 1979 after seeing the legendary Bad Brains play in a tiny venue downtown called Madam’s Organ, Scream were a group of lifelong friends who met in high school and went on to form one of America’s most seminal punk bands, and were much older than me. Over the years, they had become local heroes, respected by all musicians in the scene, and I would go to see them any chance I had. Lead singer Pete Stahl stalked the stage like a vagabond Jim Morrison possessed, bassist Skeeter Thompson held down the grooves with concrete time, and guitarists Franz Stahl and Harley Davidson (yes, you read that correctly) were a blinding duo of crunchy rhythms and solos. As morbid as it may sound, I would often fantasize that I would be in the crowd at a Scream gig and an announcement would come booming over the PA system—“We apologize for any inconvenience, but due to an emergency with their drummer, Scream will not be able to perform tonight. That is . . . unless there’s someone in the audience who can fill in for him . . .”—and I would jump up on the drum set and save the day. Juvenile, I know, but hey . . . a kid can dream . . .
Eventually, my prowess as an amateur pillow percussionist outgrew the confines of my ten-by-ten bedroom, and I started playing an actual drum set in ac
tual bands, with names like Freak Baby, Mission Impossible, and Dain Bramage. My skills were growing exponentially, and I was implementing all of the tricks I had learned from playing along to my favorite records, eventually showcasing my own bastardized versions of all my favorite drummers. I was terribly heavy-handed when I sat down behind a real drum set, given my pillow-beating training, the equivalent of an athlete’s running in the sand. I broke skins and cymbals at an alarming and painfully expensive rate, so much that I became a regular at the neighborhood music store, constantly replacing my demolished gear as the jaded employees gleefully took my money, week after week.
One day, as I passed the bulletin board full of flyers and advertisements on the wall by the front door of the music shop, I noticed a xeroxed sheet of paper out of the corner of my eye that read:
SCREAM LOOKING FOR DRUMMER. CALL FRANZ
This couldn’t be, I thought. First of all, why on earth would Scream, an internationally known band, be advertising for drummer auditions in a dumpy Falls Church, Virginia, music store? And second, how could they possibly find a drummer who could even get close to how Kent Stax played on their incredible records? I incredulously took down the number and decided that I would call, even if just to tell my friends that I had spoken with THE Franz Stahl on the phone. At the time I was seventeen years old, still in high school, and in a band with two of my closest friends called Dain Bramage, so I was surely not qualified nor ready to commit to actually joining a band as established as Scream, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to at least jam with them once for bragging rights. My ridiculous, juvenile fantasy of swooping in and saving the show had perhaps manifested this unexpected twist of fate. Deep down I felt that I had to let the universe take its course.
I raced home and nervously dialed the number from the phone on my mother’s desk, pushing aside the ungraded school papers. To my amazement, Franz answered, and after a stammering presentation of my imaginary résumé (lies), he told me that the band had nowhere to practice at the moment, but he’d keep my number and call me back when they could jam. I took that as a good sign and waited for him to get back to me. Of course, I failed to mention a few rather important things on that first call. The most glaring omission? My age. I couldn’t imagine that he would let a seventeen-year-old high school junior without a car who still lived with his mother try out for his band, so I did what any ambitious young rocker would do: I fucking lied and told him that I was twenty-one.
Courtesy of the author’s personal archives
Weeks passed without word from Franz, so I thought I’d give it one more shot, calling his number again in hopes that he had misplaced mine. His girlfriend answered and, after a long chat, promised that she would have him call me. (As I have now learned in my wise old age, if you want something from a musician, ask their girlfriend.) It worked, and within hours he returned my call. We set a time and date, opting for that dingy basement in Arlington.
I begged to borrow my sister’s 1971 white VW Bug for the evening and miraculously managed to stuff my entire drum set into it like thirty clowns playing an expert-level game of Tetris. There was barely enough room to breathe, much less move the gear shift as I drove, but nothing was going to keep me from that audition. My mind was racing with excitement as I barreled down the highway, imagining just being IN THE SAME ROOM as Pete, Skeeter, Harley, and Franz, blowing their minds with my next-level shit, living out my rock and roll fantasy.
When I arrived, I was greeted by Franz and only Franz. Having few to no expectations based on my nerdy, clearly not twenty-one-year-old voice over the phone, I’m sure that he’d informed the others that my audition was probably a waste of their time and spared them the torture. My dreams of a one-night stand with the almighty Scream were instantly dashed, but that didn’t stop me from playing like my life depended on it.
Because it did.
Afterward, Franz seemed surprisingly impressed and asked if I’d like to come back and jam again sometime. I couldn’t believe my ears. I had passed round one at least. Feeling like I had just won the lottery, I happily agreed, methodically crammed my drum set back into the VW Bug, and drove home with a heart full of pride.
The next audition was with the full lineup. Apparently, Franz had told the band that I was worth listening to, and the others joined in, curious to see this skinny, no-name kid from Springfield who knew every one of their songs beat the living shit out of his cheap Tama drum set like he was in a stadium full of people. Now I was truly barking with the big dogs, surrounded by faces that I had seen only on record sleeves or from the crowd while dancing my heart out and singing along at the top of my lungs. That dingy basement was shaking with the awesome sound of Scream, though Kent’s rudimental drumming was now replaced by my relentless Neanderthal wallop, strengthened from years of running in the sand.
After another triumphant rehearsal, I started to see that my intention of jamming with Scream for bragging rights was turning into something more serious. They unanimously agreed that I was the drummer they had been looking for, so I was now faced with the real-life opportunity to join an established band that had made a name for themselves with a killer catalog, had amassed a loyal following, and toured not only around the country but internationally as well. My dream was coming true.
I WAS AT A CROSSROADS. High school was going nowhere for me, and my future was looking more and more like a life of manual labor and suburban monotony with each dismal report card. My heart was entirely devoted to music, my one and only passion, so my grades (and my attendance) had by now slipped to the point of no return. A bitter pill to swallow considering that my mother was a much beloved teacher at our neighborhood high school, and I, her only son, was racing down a dead-end street on a collision course with the school guidance counselor at best, expulsion at worst. Then there was my father and his dreams of my becoming an upstanding Republican businessman, the most implausible of all scenarios. At this point, I’m sure that he had given up any hope for my future on Capitol Hill, but he was my father after all, and he had instilled a fear of disappointing him in me from day one. Then there were my good friends in Dain Bramage. I had known Dave Smith and Reuben Radding for years, and our little three-piece made one hell of a noise. We had yet to really tour and hadn’t even gathered much of a local fan base, but we were indeed a young band giving it our best try. In hindsight, I like to think that we were “before our time,” as our sound would have fit right into the underground explosion of the early nineties, mixing the energy of punk rock with the melodies of REM, Mission of Burma, and Hüsker Dü. But at that time, we were still just kind of floating.
Courtesy of the author’s personal archives
For me to upend my life and join Scream would mean leaving school, to the dismay of my public school teacher mother; sacrificing the already strained relationship I had with my disapproving father; and quitting the band I had started with my two close friends. It was a gigantic leap of faith, to say the least, with no guarantee of any kind of safety net. It was some scorched-earth shit. After much consideration and soul searching, I just didn’t have the courage. Perhaps because I had no faith in myself. So, I politely declined, thanking them, and my life went on as I barreled ever faster down my dead-end road.
A few months later, I saw that Scream was playing a gig downtown at the 9:30 Club, a Washington, DC, landmark for underground music. With a legal capacity of only 199 people, it was a dark, dingy dive bar, but it was our church, and I had seen dozens of shows there over the years, even playing a few myself. I decided to go to the show, as I now considered the guys my friends, but deep down I knew it would be heartbreaking to watch a band I could have joined but hadn’t, simply out of fear. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of growing up.
The houselights went down, the band took their places, and Kent Stax started the walloping snare drum intro of “Walking by Myself,” a more recent song that summoned the fire of the Stooges and the MC5 in a wall of guitars and heavy groove. The energy
in the packed club was like a tightly wound coil ready to pop, and when the full band kicked in, the room absolutely fucking exploded . . .
Hey you!
Well take a look at me
Have you forgotten what’s real or what started our scene
I’ll tell you what I mean
Am I screaming
For something to be?
Have all my friends
Turned their backs on me?
I’m out here walking by myself
I’m out here talking to myself . . .
I sang along to these words at the top of my lungs and suddenly everything made sense. I instantly regretted my decision to not be a part of something so cathartic. My heart leapt into my throat like it had been shot out of a cannon, and I decided right then and there that this was my destiny, this was my band, this was my future, and this was my life. The crossroads I was faced with in my dead-end suburban life suddenly vanished and I decided to take that leap of faith, leaving everything behind for the feeling that shot through my veins when the two hundred people in that room erupted in a wave of chaos and joy.
After the show, I told the band I had made a stupid mistake and wanted back in. After a bit of cajoling and convincing them that I was 100 percent committed this time, they welcomed me with open arms. Kent had recently become a father and chose to devote his life to his family. His decision to follow a new path opened up one for me.
Now all I had to do was turn my life upside down.
My biggest concern was my mother, of course. The woman who’d sacrificed so much for me, devoted every second of her life to my personal well-being, and shown me nothing but love from the day I was born. I never wanted to disappoint her, because aside from being my mother, she was my best friend. I couldn’t let her down. I like to say now that she disciplined me with freedom by allowing me to wander, to find my path, and ultimately find myself. I never wanted to sacrifice her trust, so I respected her and always kept it cool. I knew that my leaving school at such a young age would break her heart, but I also knew that staying would break mine.