With drumming stints in Scream, Nirvana, Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, among many other side-projects, there is enough to discuss regarding Dave Grohl without mentioning his wildly successful alternative rock outfit Foo Fighters. But with the seventh Foos album, Wasting Light, scheduled to drop on April 12 via Roswell/RCA, Exclaim! caught up with Grohl to discuss his lifetime of music in this month's sprawling and in-depth Timeline piece.
Check out the full Dave Grohl Timeline here online, as well as in our new April issue, and read five things we learned from the article below.
Five Nuggets from Dave Grohl's History:
1. Grohl was introduced to punk through Naked Raygun and Maximum Rocknroll
When visiting Chicago in his early teens, Grohl's cousin Tracy takes him to numerous punk shows, including one by Chicago punk favourites Naked Raygun at a club called the Cubby Bear. It leaves a mark on Grohl, the intimacy and energy of it informing his perception of rock music. Of this summer, Dave will years later tell Michael Azerrad in the book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, "From then on we were totally punk. We went home and bought [now-legendary San Francisco-based punk fanzine] Maximumrocknroll and tried to figure it all out."
2. Grohl learned to play the drums from Rush and Bad Brains, among others
Grohl had been teaching himself to play drums along to his favourite records by Rush (2112 was given to him by another cousin), Minor Threat, NoMeansNo, Bad Brains, and Scream at home on a makeshift kit; a pillow between his knees as a snare, his bed as toms and cymbals, a chair as a hi-hat.
3. Grohl can't see Krist Novoselic or Butch Vig without instantly being reminded of Nevermind-era Nirvana and Kurt Cobain's untimely death
Looking back now on the whirlwind few years, he doesn't understate its personal effect. "[Now], when Krist and I see each other, or when Butch and I see each other, we're bound by that Nevermind thing. That changed our lives forever, in a way that is just hard to explain. When Kurt died, that changed our lives in ways that's even more difficult to explain. And so when we see each other, it's like with the blink of an eye, you feel all of that. There's just so much between the three of us that we don't have to talk about."
4. The Foo Fighters' 2002 LP One by One is the band's least favourite of their albums
Collaborating with Queens of the Stone Age on Songs for the Deaf, Dave Grohl's busy schedule forces the Foo Fighters on a break. The hiatus is causing break-up anxiety among the band. But Grohl returns re-energized to finish the album. It is released in October 2002 and with another string of hits sells over a million copies. But even after their additional studio work, the band would go on to call One by One their least favourite, Grohl saying that they rushed it.
5. Watching the upcoming Back and Forth documentary was one of the first times Grohl had sat down and reflected on his career
Directed by Academy Award winner James Moll, Grohl says watching the film is one of the rare opportunities he's taken to really survey what he's done. "After I had seen the first cut of the movie, I looked at the lyrics and looked at what we had done, and I thought 'I think I just wrote an album about the last 20 years of my life.' There was so much emphasis on survival and starting over. We've been through a lot, we've done a lot, and we've been pretty private about a lot of things. To sit down and look at the last 20 years, is just a fucking trip."
Check out the full Dave Grohl Timeline here online, as well as in our new April issue, and read five things we learned from the article below.
Five Nuggets from Dave Grohl's History:
1. Grohl was introduced to punk through Naked Raygun and Maximum Rocknroll
When visiting Chicago in his early teens, Grohl's cousin Tracy takes him to numerous punk shows, including one by Chicago punk favourites Naked Raygun at a club called the Cubby Bear. It leaves a mark on Grohl, the intimacy and energy of it informing his perception of rock music. Of this summer, Dave will years later tell Michael Azerrad in the book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, "From then on we were totally punk. We went home and bought [now-legendary San Francisco-based punk fanzine] Maximumrocknroll and tried to figure it all out."
2. Grohl learned to play the drums from Rush and Bad Brains, among others
Grohl had been teaching himself to play drums along to his favourite records by Rush (2112 was given to him by another cousin), Minor Threat, NoMeansNo, Bad Brains, and Scream at home on a makeshift kit; a pillow between his knees as a snare, his bed as toms and cymbals, a chair as a hi-hat.
3. Grohl can't see Krist Novoselic or Butch Vig without instantly being reminded of Nevermind-era Nirvana and Kurt Cobain's untimely death
Looking back now on the whirlwind few years, he doesn't understate its personal effect. "[Now], when Krist and I see each other, or when Butch and I see each other, we're bound by that Nevermind thing. That changed our lives forever, in a way that is just hard to explain. When Kurt died, that changed our lives in ways that's even more difficult to explain. And so when we see each other, it's like with the blink of an eye, you feel all of that. There's just so much between the three of us that we don't have to talk about."
4. The Foo Fighters' 2002 LP One by One is the band's least favourite of their albums
Collaborating with Queens of the Stone Age on Songs for the Deaf, Dave Grohl's busy schedule forces the Foo Fighters on a break. The hiatus is causing break-up anxiety among the band. But Grohl returns re-energized to finish the album. It is released in October 2002 and with another string of hits sells over a million copies. But even after their additional studio work, the band would go on to call One by One their least favourite, Grohl saying that they rushed it.
5. Watching the upcoming Back and Forth documentary was one of the first times Grohl had sat down and reflected on his career
Directed by Academy Award winner James Moll, Grohl says watching the film is one of the rare opportunities he's taken to really survey what he's done. "After I had seen the first cut of the movie, I looked at the lyrics and looked at what we had done, and I thought 'I think I just wrote an album about the last 20 years of my life.' There was so much emphasis on survival and starting over. We've been through a lot, we've done a lot, and we've been pretty private about a lot of things. To sit down and look at the last 20 years, is just a fucking trip."
