Dave Grohl, Times Like His

by Martin James

  Dedicated to

  Lisa, Ruby Blue, Felix Drum and Bella Pearl

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help; Gemma Price for the research on the first version (you’re a star), Victoria Segal, Ian Winwood, Stevie Chick and Keith Cameron for the interviews, Ben Myers, Anton and Paddy at Bad Moon Publicity (and John, get in touch mate). Everett True for being himself. To Grohl for being himself. All of the people who agreed to be interviewed but asked to remain anonymous! Geordie from Killing Joke, Queens of the Stone Age, David Galgano and Liam Howlett. The guys at Southern and all of the photographers and writers whose work is featured in this book. I would also like to thank Manateebound.com and unomas.com for some of the best Grohl stuff to be found anywhere.

  Respect and thanks as always to Martin and Kaye Roach for their tireless work and support on the earlier editions of this book. And a huge thanks to James Hodgkinson, Jane Donovan and all at John Blake Publishing for steering this latest edition.

  And finally, thanks and eternal love to my family and above all to my fantastic gang, Lisa, Ruby Blue, Felix Drum and Bella Pearl – I love you all more than words…

  Martin James, Romsey, England.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  A DRUMMER JOKE

  INTRODUCTION

  FROM FREAKBABY TO FUMBLE

  MTV MELTDOWN: SELLING PUNK TO THE MASSES

  RECLAIMING PUNK FROM THE MTV MASSES

  ALONE AND AN EASY TARGET

  WHAT HAVE WE DONE WITH INNOCENCE?

  THERE IS NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

  DONE, DONE AND THEN I’M ON TO THE NEXT ONE

  LOOKING FOR RELIEF IN YOUR MISERABLE LIFE?

  ALWAYS WAS THE LUCKY ONE

  WHAT IF I SAY I’M NOT LIKE THE OTHERS?

  DESERVE THE FUTURE

  THESE ARE MY FAMOUS LAST WORDS

  IF I WERE ME

  IN THE CLEAR

  POSTSCRIPT… A REFLECTION

  DISCOGRAPHY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Plates

  Copyright

  A DRUMMER JOKE

  A drummer in a world famous band decides to record some music as a solo artist. He needs some equipment so he goes shopping in the local mall. He walks up to the sales assistant and explains what he wants to buy.

  “I’ll take a guitar, a bass, some keyboards, a mixing desk, some nice effects and a microphone,” he declares as he hands over his credit card.

  “You’re a drummer, aren’t you?” replies the assistant.

  “Yeah… how did you know?” the drummer asks.

  “You’re in McDonald’s.”

  Drummers don’t make great albums on their own. Drummers don’t make great drummers on their own. Drummers wear those stupid head mics when they sing. Drummers always want to add a bit of jazz. Drummers secretly admire Phil Collins for stepping from behind the drum stool and making a career out of being a singer. Drummers think Animal from The Muppets is cool. Drummers think The Muppets are cool. Drummers are the butt of almost every joke to have emerged from the music industry. Drummers hit things for a living… how dumb is that?

  INTRODUCTION

  Dave Grohl flashes a boozy grin across the plastic tables that adorn the backstage area. Superfly sideburns and gigolo-chic hairstyle frame his thin, chiselled face, slightly drained from intensive touring.

  As he talks, plumes of smoke billow from his nose and mouth. He takes another drag, laughs at events that are unfolding around him and smoke again floods his face, licking around its angular contours. He takes a swig of beer. It’s the latest in a line of beers he’s downed since his band, Foo Fighters, played their mid-afternoon set. He’s in a triumphant mood. He’s talkative, animated and just relaxed enough to let his oft-claimed insecurity take a back seat.

  I tell him my drummer joke. He’s heard it before. An English journalist had told him it a couple of days ago. But he likes it. In fact, he loves drummer jokes. He even regularly checks out a site dedicated to drummer jokes. This joke was new to him a couple of days ago. Now it’s second hand. But he laughs. In fact he laughs a lot, beer splatters down his chin and smoke pours from his mouth. He leans forward, stubs out yet another cigarette and starts his own line in drummer jokes. Dave Grohl is proud of his drumming roots.

  “How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?” he asks. “Just one, but the roadie has to get the ladder, set it up and put the bulb in the socket for him! How can you tell a drummer’s at the door?” he continues, barely stopping for breath between punch-line and guffaw. “The knocking speeds up.”

  Twenty minutes later, we’re all side-of-stage for the headlining act, The Prodigy. Dave Grohl loves the Prodigy as much as he loves drummer jokes. To him they embody everything that he worships about adrenalised punk rock, despite their dance beginnings.

  A couple of years earlier, Grohl had witnessed The Prodigy play at Scotland’s T In The Park festival. “That’s one of Nirvana’s songs they’ve sampled,” he’d declared to local television personality Ewan Macleod. He went on to explain that they let The Prodigy use the sample of Nirvana’s ‘Very Ape’ on the track ‘Voodoo People’ because “they’re the best fucking rock ’n’ roll band in the world, man. Better than Nirvana ever were.”

  Some might argue with that statement. But on this late summer evening in Leeds, it is easy to see what Grohl meant by the claim. And it’s obvious he still feels this way by the look of unadulterated, excitable admiration on his Cheshire cat grinning face.

  As the Essex stormtroopers turn up the heat on the festival crowd, Grohl is overtaken by sheer energy. “I FUCKING LOVE THIS!” he screams. In a sudden burst of hyperactive energy, he jumps on to the speaker rigging and starts to scramble up like a marine. He’s followed by one much less fit journalist who seizes the moment to get a better view of the heaving crowd. Sadly, I’m not as fast as Grohl and security quickly drag me from my pursuit, clawing me as far away from trouble as possible. Then they go for Dave. They pull at him and he wriggles. They drag him and he laughs. Eventually they bring him back to Earth. And he just giggles.

  Much later, as The Prodigy’s road crew busied themselves with clearing the stage, the security guards could be heard boasting about the event like cabbies bragging about a recent fare (“you’ll never guess who I ‘ad in ‘ere just now…”).

  “Ere, that was that geezer from Nirvana you nearly decked.”

  “Fuck off, he’s dead. Even I know that.”

  “Nah you twat, he was the drummer.”

  “Shit, the drummer in Nirvana…. Wait till I tell me mates. I loved that band. What was his name then?”

  “Fucked if I know. Just the drummer.”

  Except Dave Grohl isn’t “just the drummer from Nirvana.” He never was just the drummer for anyone. Or the guitarist. Or the singer. Dave Grohl is, in fact, the embodiment of the multi-skilled DIY ethic at the centre of punk rock. An attitude which translated in 1977 into the punk slogan as declared in London fanzine, Sniffin’ Glue, “here’s three chords, now form a band.”

  For many though, this ethos begged to be taken further. It translated as an uncompromising, nothing-ventured-nothing-gained approach to all instruments. It was about pure excitement and wonderment. A love of how each instrument sounded and a desire to experience everything, regardless of ability. As such, Dave Grohl’s natural exuberance and refusal to place self-imposed obstacles in his own way have seen him move from guitar to drums to multi-instrumentalist to front man with the kind of ease usually associated with your average Renaissance man. The punk rock Leonardo De Vinci whose dumb-assed antics belie an intelligence
and wit that see him tackling all new instruments with a rare verve.

  It’s this adaptability that has marked out his career. A life in which he has jumped into the recently vacated stools of at least two well-respected bands – one of them on the verge of going global. This adaptability has also helped propel him into the stadium rock icon he is today. Not that he would agree with that description. Typically, he would call himself a guy from Nowheresville who got lucky. Very lucky.

  Dave Grohl, then, is the archetypal punk kid who devoted his life to the band ethic. On the road, in the studio, sleeping in vans, squats and fleapit rooms, he’s done the lot. But more than simply being that punk kid made good, he is the epitome of punk rock itself. From its energetic DIY grassroots to the corporate investment it is today. He represents the essence of punk’s journey from outsider force to mainstream genre, backroom to stadium, a few copies of a demo tape sold out of the back of a van to millions of albums shifted all over the world.

  But Grohl’s story isn’t one of a simple sell-out. He’s remained true to his own ideals throughout. He was never the political activist like his Washington DC straight edge counterparts (and mentors) in his early days with punk bands Mission Impossible, Scream etc. Similarly, he was far less fazed than his band mates when Nirvana was hit full force by the onslaught of fame. Since he first started putting out records, Dave Grohl has been accused of ditching his friends for his heroes, trying to co-opt the legacy he helped create by copying his old band’s sound and moving from the anti-star standpoint of his punk rock days to embracing a celebrity lifestyle in the gossip columns. He’s been described as a megalomaniac; someone who has always wanted to be a star and a hypocrite who drops ideals as quickly as band mates.

  By contrast, he’s also been described as the nicest man in rock. He is critically lauded as one of the finest rock drummers on the planet. Just ask Queens of the Stone Age, whom he drummed for in 2002, and the legendary Killing Joke, whom he turned in a powerhouse performance for on their 2003 album The Death and Resurrection Show. If that’s not enough, he’s also dropped one or two astounding songs… not only with Foo Fighters, but with bands in previous lives like Nirvana, Scream, Dain Bramage, Mission Impossible and Freak Baby.

  So, far more than just the drummer in Nirvana, Dave Grohl is someone who has walked the punk rock path from its snotty-nosed, oppositional beginnings to the corporate advertising soundtrack it is today. A man with a history as exciting as his present day, and a future that is brighter than a metal furnace.

  1

  FROM FREAKBABY TO FUMBLE

  What’s the difference between a chiropodist and a drummer?

  A chiropodist bucks up your feet.

  In 1969, the Stooges released the definitive collection of punk classics with their eponymous debut album. A series of three-minute songs that punched, spat and kicked against the pricks, but above all pointed an accusatory finger at the middle-class indulgences of the West Coast’s hippy scenesters and the arty habits of Warhol’s Factory fops and their New York cool.

  In the Stooges’ unique world was Iggy Pop, a singer who could move like a tiger on Vaseline (as Bowie would have it) and croon like Sinatra on amphetamines. Legend has it that the Stooges got their deal after Iggy jumped on a Sony Records boss’ desk and delivered his finest Sinatra rendition. “I’m not sure if he signed us because he was impressed or scared,” Iggy told me in 1999.

  With that debut album, the Stooges delivered a blue-print in trail-blazing, guitar-frenzied punk rock attacks. “It’s 1969 OK, war across the USA,” sang Iggy. The war he referred to had little to do with Vietnam. It had nothing to do with the fight that Dr Timothy Leary and the rest of the élite intelligentsia were embroiled in by attempting to liberate LSD. The Stooges war was all about society’s real outsiders versus the mainstream middle-class, the middle Americans that dominated the culture of the time. This was the punk rock manifesto. A celebration of the outsider, a body of people who would eventually be defined as Generation X.

  In the same year eulogised by the war-mongering Iggy and his Stooges, a young couple from Warren, Ohio called James and Virginia Grohl had a son. It was their second child. The first, Lisa, was born three years earlier. Their new addition was given the name David Eric. He was born on January 14.

  The Grohl family moved to Springfield, Virginia when Dave was three. Thanks to his parents’ shared love of music, their young son quickly developed a desire to play an instrument. His mother had been a singer in a band and his father was an accomplished flautist, and so making music was a normal part of Grohl family life. There was always a guitar lying around the house, so by the time Grohl was ten he’d already started to pick out tunes like Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On The Water’.

  “I was always really good at figuring out songs by ear,” Grohl said in 1995. This natural aptitude was complemented around the age of eleven by formal guitar lessons. He also spent hours practising with his friend, Larry Hinkle. The duo called themselves the H G Hancock Band.

  “I always had a guitar wherever I went around my house growing up. Sitting on the couch watching TV, I’d always have it in my hands,” he explained to Eric Brace of unomas.com. “My mom was like, ‘Put down that guitar and do your homework!’ I’d play along to records on this portable record player my mom would borrow from the Fairfax County public schools. We’d bought a few Beatles records and this K-Tel album that had Edgar Winters’ ‘Frankenstein’ on it, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world. That was my favourite.” (1)

  James and Virginia separated when their son was only seven. Dave Grohl’s father was a journalist for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. Following the spilt he moved back to Ohio, with the children staying with their mother in Virginia. “I was so young I didn’t understand it (his parents’ divorce). And by the time I got a hold of the situation, it was too late for me to have a freak-out,” explained Grohl. “It just seemed abnormal for all my friends to have a father. I thought growing-up with my mother and sister was just the way it was supposed to be.” (2)

  Following the divorce, Virginia took on three jobs to support Dave and his sister Lisa. She worked as a High School teacher and also in a department store at night. On the weekend she did estimates for a carpet-cleaning company. “She worked her fingers to the bone just to make sure we survived,” says a proud Grohl.

  Grohl got his first electric guitar for Christmas when he was twelve. It was a 1960s Silvertone with the amp built into the case. A classic in fact. Unfortunately, the young Grohl’s hyperactive personality soon saw to the end of that guitar. While messing around one day, he dropped and broke it. It was only a few months old. The heartbroken youngster soon got a replacement however, this time in the shape of a black Memphis Les Paul copy.

  With the discovery of distortion pedals and a growing confidence in his own ability, Grohl soon joined a local covers band specialising in faithfully recreated copies of songs by The Who and The Rolling Stones. When the band was invited to perform at a local nursing home, Grohl was to experience for the first time the adrenalised joy of performing live. One song that stands out in his mind from this show was their version of ‘Time Is On My Side’, simply because the audience actually danced.

  A seed had been planted in Dave Grohl’s psyche that would grow with increased rapidity over the following years. At first this newly focussed love of being in a band manifested itself with him having drum lessons at high school. However the first subcultural focus for Grohl’s rock ’n’ roll aspirations came when he was thirteen. It was the summer of 1982 and his family took their annual holiday to Evanston, Illinois to visit his cousins. In the year since they’d last visited, Grohl’s cousin Tracey had undergone an image transformation that would leave Dave speechless. In twelve short months, she had become a fully formed punk rocker.

  “I was greeted at the front door by Tracey,” he explained in 1995. “But this wasn’t the Tracey I had grown to love, this was punk Tracey. Complete with bondage pants, sp
iked hair, chains, the whole nine yards. It was the most fucking awesome thing I had ever seen.”

  This unassuming family holiday subsequently made an indelible mark on the fledgling rock icon’s view of the world of music. Through Tracey, a door to an entirely new world had been opened. Until then punk rockers had been something that Grohl had only ever seen on television and in the media. They were alien to his hometown, simply not a feature of his life and consequently, as was the case for so many people living through this period, punk rock had taken on an almost virtual image. A scene that existed somewhere else entirely.

  Until that was, the day he saw Tracey. With her outlandish looks and feisty passion, punk rock was suddenly wrenched out of the TV screen and crash-landed into the reality of Grohl’s life. His previously blinkered eyes began to feast upon the huge network of underground labels, fanzines and bands as slowly he began to relate to the innate sense of alternative culture and history that punk represented.

  In addition to this Tracey had amassed a huge record collection from all over the world. During that summer break, Grohl developed a love of the sounds that would remain with him throughout his musical career. Indeed, many of these seminal records in Tracey’s collection would later be regularly referenced by Grohl in his own bands.

  Perhaps more significantly for an artist who would make his name as an invigorating performer, it was during this time that Grohl took in his first live show. It was at a venue called the Cubby Bear and featured Naked Raygun and R.O.T.A. (two Big Black-affiliated punk bands from Chicago). The gritty, in-your-face rawness of this low budget gig filled the gig virgin Grohl with intense wonderment. He felt an immediate affinity with the surrounding vibe and any thoughts of continuing with covers bands and playing live in nursing homes left his mind. His ambitions instantly converted to a punk-rock-only currency. However, at this stage, he didn’t even have a band.