Dave Grohl, Times Like His

by Martin James

  Grohl was clear in his defence that he wasn’t playing the part of the Luddite in the face of technological change. Indeed, many of his own albums had been recorded using Pro Tools, while the Trent Reznor section in the Sound City film covered the idea of digital recording as an equally creative, if very different approach to producing music. If anything, the one thing Grohl lamented in the movie was the loss of the community aspect of the old recording studios in an age when musicians can record everything without ever involving other people. This position was made even clearer in his post-film Q&A at the London launch of Sound City. When asked if he felt technology was killing music, Grohl placed his humanist position clearly.

  “The future of music is people, it has nothing to do with technology,” he said. “It really doesn’t, if you think about it. There was music long before there was electricity, and there’ll be music long after all of us have gone. It’s not going to go away, you’ll always be able to find it. It’ll be in the fucking pub down the street, or on the side stage. Music is an entirely human experience… my six year old daughter has it the same today as you had it, 50 years ago. That’ll happen forever, it’s a matter of connecting emotionally to music. As long as there’s still people with instruments, in your face, singing about something entirely real that you connect to, then… well, we’re fine.”(8)

  Notes

  1. Andy Morris, Q Magazine, February 2 2013, ‘GQ&A: Dave Grohl on Barry Manilow, Metallica and reuniting with Nirvana’

  2. NME.com (http://www.nme.com/photos/the-silver-tongue-of-dave-grohl-30-best-quotes/329125#/photo/2#eZ0lTW36Dhz1LZ32.99)

  3. Tim Noakes, Dazed & Confused, 2013, (http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/15904/1/dave-grohl-vs-rick-rubin)

  4. Marc Burrows, Drowned In Sound, 19 February 2013, (http://drownedinsound.com/news/4146072-10-things-we-ve-learned-from-dave-grohls-documentary-about-sound-city-studios)

  5. Andy Morris, Q Magazine, 2 February 2013, ‘GQ&A: Dave Grohl on Barry Manilow, Metallica and reuniting with Nirvana’

  6. Fuse, quoted in Brian Lion, ‘Under the Gun’, December 13 2012, (http://www.underthegunreview.net/2012/12/13/paul-mccartney-performs-with-nirvana-members-at-hurricane-sandy-benefit-concert-records-song-for-grohls-sound-city-documentary/)

  7. Mark Beamont, NME, 11 March 2013, (http://www.nme.com/reviews/dave-grohl/14189#W3r2kwLYQGWRFhB3.99)

  8. Marc Burrows, 19 February 2013, Drowned in Sound, (http://drownedinsound.com/news/4146072-10-things-we-ve-learned-from-dave-grohls-documentary-about-sound-city-studios)

  14

  IN THE CLEAR

  What do you give a drummer with big ideas?

  A tiny box to keep them in.

  It has been said that the last people to recognise an artist’s success are the inhabitants of their hometown. In Dave Grohl’s case, however, his hometown recognition would become twofold in July 2012. Already the recipient of the honour of having a street (or an alley, at least) named after him, Grohl’s second honour came when Warren, Ohio unveiled what might go down as one of the more surreal celebratory statues in history. Rather than the usual representation of the artist himself, Grohl became immortalised through a huge pair of 409kg (902lb) drumsticks, which would themselves become immortalised by the Guinness World Records as the world’s biggest drumsticks. The sticks were first shown on July 7 during a concert at the Warren Amphitheater, where they remained until the September, when they were moved to David Grohl Alley.

  Grohl tweeted his thanks to Warren, posting, “To the wonderful city of Warren, from the bottom of my heart I’d like to thank you so much… For the childhood memories. For my family. For my very own alley. For the world’s largest drumsticks! And for all of your support… But most of all for being such a great community. One that makes me proud to say… I am from Warren, Ohio!”

  Despite this somewhat bizarre accolade he and the band were at this time still focused on gigging, but as the Wasting Light touring machine started to grind down it seemed that Grohl might be on the verge of going against his nature and taking some extended downtime.

  On September 30 2012, playing one of their final scheduled gigs of the year, the Foo Fighters joined forces with an array of musicians including Neil Young and The Black Keys to play the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park, New York. According to their website Global Citizen is “a community of people like you. People who want to learn about and take action on the world’s biggest challenges—and use their power to get other people involved too.” The event, which pulled a crowd of 60,000 people, is typical of a social media generation demanding global change through democratic conversation. It may have been notable for the enormous number of attendees and Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s ten-minute version of ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ featuring Dave Grohl on guitar, but a comment that the Foos’ frontman made during their own set had fans of the band concerned: “We don’t have any shows after this.” He announced, “This is where we play as many songs as we can in a short period of time because, honestly, I don’t know when we’re gonna do it again.”

  On October 2 2012, Grohl seemed to confirm the fans’ worst fears that the band would be taking a hiatus on the Foo Fighters’ Facebook page. Rumours of a break-up inevitably emerged.

  He wrote:

  Hey everyone…

  Dave here. Just wanted to write and thank you all again from the bottom of my heart for another incredible year. (Our 18th, to be exact!) We truly never could have done any of this without you…

  Never in my wildest dreams did I think Foo Fighters would make it this far. I never thought we COULD make it this far, to be honest. There were times when I didn’t think the band would survive. There were times when I wanted to give up. But… I can’t give up this band. And I never will. Because it’s not just a band to me. It’s my life. It’s my family. It’s my world.

  Yes… I was serious. I’m not sure when the Foo Fighters are going to play again. It feels strange to say that, but it’s a good thing for all of us to go away for a while. It’s one of the reasons we’re still here. Make sense? I never want to NOT be in this band. So, sometimes it’s good to just… put it back in the garage for a while…

  But, no gold watches or vacations just yet… I’ll be focusing all of my energy on finishing up my Sound City documentary film and album for worldwide release in the very near future. A year in the making, it could be the biggest, most important project I’ve ever worked on. Get ready… it’s coming.

  Me, Taylor, Nate, Pat, Chris, and Rami… I’m sure we’ll all see you out there… somewhere…

  Thank you, thank you, thank you…

  Dave

  Throughout the filming process of Sound City, his “biggest, most important project” ever, Grohl continued to work with other musicians and bands. Indeed, one of his more unusual collaborations took place as he was filming the documentary. By 2012 Sound City Studios had been acquired by Fairfax Recordings and were only available for the exclusive use of their artists. Among these was Northern Virginian hip-hop outfit RDGLDGRN (pronounced Red Gold Green), who were recording an EP with label founder Kevin Augunas. The hip-hop trio approached Grohl, who was filming there at the time, to drum on their signature track, ‘I Love Lamp’. He jumped at the chance and ended up providing beats and production advice for all but one of the EP’s tracks. Interestingly, the groove that he supplied to ‘I Love Lamp’ is known as the “bounce beat”, which provided the backbone to the Washington Go-Go dance scene – a sound you wouldn’t normally associate with Grohl.

  Perhaps closer to home was the re-ignition of at least one old musical flame during this period. On November 6 2012, Josh Homme confirmed in a Radio 1 interview with Zane Lowe that Dave Grohl would be filling in for the departing drummer Joey Castillo on the forthcoming Queens of the Stone Age album, … Like Clockwork. The move came as little surprise considering Grohl’s previously stated love of the band, however this time the venture wasn’t met with questions about his loyalty to the Foos. Indeed, as the
recording process for …Like Clockwork started it became clear that this was a two-way arrangement. Frontman Josh Homme and regular QOTSA collaborators Alain Johannes and Chris Goss were enrolled in the recording of Sound City: Real to Reel. The latter two would go on to become part of the Sound City Players supergroup that Grohl formed to promote the film project.

  The … Like Clockwork album emerged in June 2013 to huge critical acclaim. In the event Grohl had only contributed drums to five songs: ‘If I Had a Tail’, ‘My God Is the Sun’, ‘Smooth Sailing’, ‘Appear Missing’ and ‘Fairweather Friends’. The latter track features legendary Screaming Trees’ frontman Mark Lanegan, also a full-time member of QOTSA between 2001 and 2004. More surprising, however, is the guest appearance on track from Elton John. Not that this was any kind of a surprise to fans of Grohl or Queens as Elton John had leaked the information as early as February 2013 on Chelsea Lately, a late night comedy talk show on the NBC entertainment channel E!. Even more significant for Foo Fighters’ fans was the fact that the guest host for the show was Grohl himself. It marked the second time he had taken on the host role for the show, having previously taken on the task in December 2012.

  Speaking in front of cameras takes a certain kind of self-assuredness, however public speaking requires insane levels of self-confidence and the ability to ignore any doubts you may have in your own abilities. Put simply, public speaking could challenge the most outgoing rock star. But it was into the arena of public speaking that Grohl stepped in March 2014 when he delivered a keynote speech at the 2013 South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas.

  In a speech that lasted just under an hour, he discussed his earliest excitement at hearing Edgar Winters’ instrumental ‘Frankenstein’ and then on to his own career. He talked about having dinner with 2011 keynote speaker Bruce Springsteen, mentioning SXSW and telling him what he was about to do.

  “I congratulated him on last year’s amazing keynote, quoting him on his insight and humour, and told him this year’s keynote speaker was me. He started at me for a moment, and then slowly cracked that famous smile that we all know and love, a smile that can light up an entire stadium, and then he started laughing. At me. As if to say, ‘Good f***ing luck, buddy.’ But truth be told, that’s not the first time anybody’s said that to me.”

  The key theme to his lecture wasn’t simply personal biography and name-dropping, it was in fact the importance of each individual’s voice, regardless of who the individual is. He said: “There is no right or wrong – there is only your voice. What matters most is that it’s your voice. Cherish it. Nurture it. Challenge it. Respect it.”

  As an aside he also admitted that Psy’s notoriously whacky global pop hit ‘Gangnam Style’ was one of his favourite songs of “the past decade.” The two billion-time viewed Youtube sensation was a song he no doubt became aware of through his daughters’ love of pop (especially Katy Perry!) – “The worst thing they (Grohl’s daughters) impose on me is Katy Perry’s latest album.” NME reported him as saying, “Her (Perry’s) music is a real test in terms of loyalty towards your kids. But at the same time I can still make them listen to good stuff. I got my eldest two, Harper and Violet, a turntable and Beatles’ box set. So they listen to Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album. Give a six-year-old a turntable and all of The Beatles’ records and I guarantee that within one hour they will be doing what you did when you were six years old, too. Records on the floor, dancing, singing; it’s great.”

  Later in 2013, Grohl not only put his drumsticks to use for various bands but also ended up sitting in the production seat. This time, however, he wasn’t working in the alternative rock territory he had become best known for, but with country artist Zac Brown. The country connection should come as no surprise as the Foo Fighters’ music has often strayed towards that genre of music. On November 6 2013, he played drums for the Zac Brown Band at the 2013 Country Music Awards (CMA) in Nashville, Tennessee, replacing drummer Chris Fryar, where they played ‘Day For The Dead’, a track from the band’s four-track EP, The Grohl Sessions, Vol. 1.

  According to Brown the collaboration happened following a chance meeting in West Hollywood store John Varvatos. Grohl says he’d not actually heard of the Zac Brown Band, but the two bonded over a love of analogue recording and Brown subsequently invited him to record with his band.

  “I don’t know how I tricked him into working with us, but it’s really cool,” Brown explained at the time.

  At the time much was made of how Grohl brought a sense of rock to the country sound in the same way that Taylor Swift had introduced pop to country. The EP itself had numerous telltale Grohl tricks in both recording and drumming. Most notable was the vocal sound which echoed the Foos’ own recordings. A second EP from The Grohl Sessions was planned for a 2014 release but failed to materialise that year.

  Around the same time as the Zac Brown Band announcement yet another Grohl guest appearance emerged. This time it was on If You Have Ghost, a covers EP by Swedish death metal band Ghost B.C. Again he took on the role of producer while also playing guitar on the title track, a cover of a Roky Erickson song ‘Two Headed Dog’, and drumming on an ABBA cover, ‘I’m a Marionette’. It was also rumoured that Grohl had played live with the band, however their outrageous costumes and face paint would have concealed his identity. A member of the band, who remain un-named and are known simply as “faceless ghouls”, told Full Metal Jacket that, “It was a very, very playful project, very, yeah, very fun and inspiring.” The Dave Grohl connection came through chance meeting backstage at festivals when the “faceless ghoul” being interviewed suggested they work together. The actual EP sessions came together very quickly in Grohl’s downtime after the Wasting Light tour had finished.

  “So, it was very quick,” stated the “faceless ghoul”. “Sort of decided that, well, we should do something very, very soon and very quick, just in order to make it happen. Because, if you do something and place it too far ahead, it might collide with something else.”

  Despite suggestions that he might be taking a break, the post-Wasting Light activity turned out to be typically intense for Grohl, who has proved throughout his career that Foo Fighters’ downtime and himself don’t walk hand in hand. The truth was, despite announcing the hiatus from the Foo Fighters, the band had been writing songs throughout the year prior to Grohl’s extra-curricular country, hip hop and death metal projects. Indeed, Grohl himself had announced the fact that the band were working on a new album at the 2013 Brit Awards, only four months after his onstage and Facebook announcement. Rumours of a break-up were greatly exaggerated, it seems.

  Grohl confirmed the new album and hinted at its ambitious nature to XFM in August 2013: “Well, I’ll tell you, we have been in our studio writing, and in the past few weeks we’ve written an album, and we are going to make this album in a way that no one’s ever done before, and we’re pretty excited about it.”

  Throughout this period clues about the project were leaked via social media with the clearest early indication of the album activity coming from Chris Shiflett, who posted to his Instagram account on September 6 2013 a photo that indicated at least thirteen songs were to be recorded for the new album. Meanwhile, Butch Vig revealed through his Twitter feed that he was back in the production seat. YouTube became the platform of choice for an announcement that the band’s break from live activity was also coming to an end. On October 31 2013 the official Foo Fighters’ YouTube channel hosted a film of a motorcyclist – played by American actor Erik Estrada – delivering each member of the band an invitation to play secret gigs in Mexico in December. On January 16 2014, a picture of several master tapes was uploaded to Foo Fighters’ Facebook page. Some of these tapes were labelled ‘#8’.

  The social media activity surrounding both the production of album number eight and the Foos’ return to playing live revealed some of the key ways in which the music promotion industry had changed since that first album. One of the more interesting aspects of this
could be seen through an apparently closer relationship between band and fans with community platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube becoming the space for breaking news and encouraging fans to engage in discussions around the band. The middleman of the media gatekeeper was effectively becoming displaced. This relationship between fans and band became even more clear a few months later, in June 2014, when a crowd-funding initiative was set up and invested in by 1,500 fans via website Tilt.com to bring the Foo Fighters to Richmond, VA. The show eventually took place on September 17, something that would have seemed unimaginable when Foo Fighters first launched.

  2014 was the Foo Fighters twentieth anniversary year so Grohl decided to do something special. It was announced in May 2014 that the band would be celebrating with a TV series entitled Sonic Highways. Two months later Butch Vig confirmed that an album of the same name was finished and set to be released a month after the TV premiere.

  Of course the album and TV special is no new phenomenon. It’s been a staple promotional trick since artists first realised the potential offered by reaching to a TV audience as far back as the early 1960s. Indeed, with the launch of MTV in the 1980s, the TV tie-in was increasingly expected as artists indulged in the video format. However, Sonic Highways offered a fresh twist, and one that was hinted at during the making of Sound City, when Grohl expressed an interest in the ways in which environment can have an effect on how music sounds.