In the past we have already announced an article on Dave Grohl, today that time has come! To celebrate his birthday, we tell you about his double life, actually not just double!

Dave Grohl, in fact, has always known how to put his talent and his eclecticism at the service of others, thus passing from grunge (drummer of  Nirvana) to post-grunge and power pop (as Foo Fighters frontman), to stoner (Queens of the Stone Age), then metal (Probot and  Nine Inch Nails) and punk (Juliette and the Licks).

And, as if that wasn’t enough, in 2013, Dave Grohl piloted the Sound City: Real to Reel project, which pays homage to the legendary Sound City studios in Los Angeles (California).

If this does not imply being a divinity, he is very close!

Youth of Dave Grohl

David Eric Grohl was born on January 14, 1969 in Warren, Ohio, the son of James Grohl and Virginia Wendt, he has an older sister named Lisa. While Grohl was only 3 years old, the family moved from Warren, Ohio, to Springfield, Virginia. Three years later, at the age of 6, Grohl’s parents divorced and he moved to live with his mother.

At the age of 12, Dave Grohl was learning to play the guitar. After getting tired of guitar lessons, Grohl learns the basics of the instrument on his own and with various friends he plays in local bands in the region. A year later, in 1982, Grohl and his sister spent the summer in Illinois with their cousin Tracy. There, the cousin takes them to a punk rock concert and Grohl explains: “Then we went totally punk.”

As a teenager, Grohl changes middle school and high school several times due to his marijuana use, which forces his mother to transfer him. Right now he plays in several bands, including Freak Baby, where he plays the guitar. After the band fired the drummer, Grohl decided to switch instruments and switch to drums. Grohl then cites Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham as a major life-changing influence.

Once again, he learns the basics of drums on his own, Freak Baby then changes his name to Mission Impossible.

In 1987, he was only sixteen when he joined Scream, a group through which he lived his first national tours.

Carreer with Nirvana

Two years later, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, who have just released their debut album Bleach but don’t have a reliable drummer for their tours, attend a Scream concert. The artistic love at first sight is immediate, especially as Cobain is also looking for a drummer capable of singing.

In 1990, Grohl becomes a member of the trio and records  Nevermind (1991), an album whose success went beyond the sphere of grunge to mark the history of rock.

Dave Grohl, despite being a multi-instrumentalist, chooses not to submit entire songs to Cobain who will remain until the end the songwriter, the main commander of the ship. But his suicide in April 1994 changed that.

After the death of Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl went through a period of depression, finding it difficult to listen and play music. He was on the verge of interrupting his musical career despite some invitations to join other groups.

Just “settling behind a drums reminded him too much of what he was in Nirvana”. It was only after playing at the 1994 MTV Movie Awards that he felt he could launch his own music project, “a kind of cathartic therapy, to record and release the songs he wrote himself.” In the same year, due to plans, in his private life, Grohl gets married, but the marriage lasts 3 years.

Also in the same year, in just one week at Robert Lang Studios north of Seattle, Grohl records vocals, guitar, bass, just about everything! He intended to publish the materials initially under the name “Foo Fighters”, referring to the phenomenon of fighters observed by airplane pilots during World War II and in relation to UFOs.

The birth of Foo Fighters

Arousing the interest of record labels, Dave Grohl signs a contract with Capitol Records and is encouraged to hire other members to form a group and thus promote the album of the same name: Nate Mendel on bass and William Goldsmith on drums arrive, both of Sunny. Day Real Estate.

And then there’s Pat Smear, former guitarist on the Nirvana stage and member of The Germs. Although often compared to what Cobain did, this debut record received good reviews upon its release in July 1995, going platinum in the United States.

In 1996 Goldsmith decides to leave the Foo Fighters. Taylor Hawkins replaces him once the album is finished, but Smear asks to leave as well, exhausted from a tour lasting many months. Franz Stahl, founding member of Scream, Grohl’s group before Nirvana, is chosen to succeed him.

A real success when it was released in May 1997, “The Color and the Shape” surpasses its predecessor on all levels, especially in sales. Uncomfortable with the band, Stahl leaves Foo Fighters at the end of the two-year tour. Grohl, Hawkins and Mendel find themselves recording “There Is Nothing Left to Lose” in the spring of 1999. Released in November and also benefiting from good reviews, this third album still sells less well than its predecessors. Chris Shiflett becomes the fourth member of the group on their subsequent tour from 1999 to 2001.

Erase and rewind

The quartet then takes a break: Hawkins recovers from his heroin overdose and Dave Grohl performs in Queens of the Stone Age’s “Songs for the Deaf”.  Foo Fighters return to their studios in November at Grohl’s Studio 606 in Alexandria, Virginia, but since January 2002, the recording sessions become sterile.

Despite twenty-nine songs recorded in four months, the sessions are considered unsatisfactory and tensions are growing among the members. If you remember, we had told you similar episodes (perhaps a little more serious) with  Pantera. In April, Foo Fighters take another hiatus and get involved in their personal projects: Grohl becomes a full-time drummer for Queens of the Stone Age, recording the album “Songs for the Deaf” and touring. what followed.

The same year, he was contacted by Lenny Kravitz to play drums in (I Can’t Make It) Another Day, a title meant to be a duet between  Michael Jackson and Kravitz himself. Grohl saves the game but the project fails. The quartet of Fighters reunites again at the concert scheduled at the Coachella Festival, which sees Hawkins and Grohl clash in rehearsal. Despite everything, they decide to play together in the evening. Eventually, the pleasure takes over during the show. So they choose to continue working together.

Hawkins and Grohl rework previously recorded songs and compose new ones. Released in late October 2002, “One by One” remained on the Billboard 200 for more than fifty weeks. True commercial success, it even won the Grammy Award for “Best Rock Album” in 2004.

Dave Grohl doesn’t stop

In 2002 Grohl does not stop, plays the drums for “Tenacious D” (he is a great friend of Jack Black) and takes part in David Bowie‘s album “Heathen”.

The following year, Grohl again assisted Chan Marshall’s drums of the band “Cat Power” in the recording of the album “You Are Free”. Then in 2004 he plays for the industrial rock group  “Nine Inch Nails” nel loro album “With Teeth”, e nel 2005 su una canzone dei “Garbage” per il loro album “Bleed Like Me”.

Grohl also released a heavy metal project called Probot in 2004: the album contains several songs composed and performed on drums by Dave Grohl, with vocals provided by many heavy metal personalities. They participated in this project: Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Thomas Gabriel Fischer of Celtic Frost, Conrad Lant of Venom and Max Cavalera of Soulfly.

He also participates as a drummer in the recording of “Four on the Floor” by Juliette and the Licks, the group of actress Juliette Lewis.

In addition, while waiting to know where the Foo Fighters will go musically, Dave Grohl composes acoustic songs for possible film music.

Not wanting to do a solo album, he introduces these pieces to the band members, who are not convinced to change their musical style that much. He then decides to celebrate their 10th anniversary with a double album, offering a rock part and an acoustic part. “In Your Honor” benefits from the presence of some guests such as John Paul Jones, Josh Homme and Norah Jones. Very well received by critics, the album finished to the top of several sales charts.

The return of Foo Fighters

The world tour that follows begins in the summer of 2005 and ends a year later, with an acoustic final that sees the return of Smear and the release in November 2006 of a live album titled “Skin and Bones”.  Foo Fighters returned to the studio in spring 2007 to re-record a sixth studio album with Gil Norton. Then comes “Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace”, a mix of songs ranging from hardcore punk to country. He was awarded the Grammy Award for “Best Rock Album” in 2008.

In 2009 the Foo Fighters released their first compilation, “Greatest Hits”, which is neither “their best songs” nor “their favorite songs” but only those that define the identity of the group, the songs that have marked the their Californian history and brought in Butch Vig for production, twenty years after “Nevermind”.

Since the summer of 2009, Dave Grohl has been the drummer of Them Crooked Vultures, a new project in collaboration with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and John Paul Jones, former bassist of Led Zeppelin. In September 2009, Dave Grohl recorded with Duff McKagan the song Watch This for Slash, guitarist Slash’s (formerly Guns N ‘Roses) solo album released in April 2010.

After the release of a cover album titled “Medium Rare” and available only on vinyl, the five musicians embark on a tour. This lasted until the end of September 2012 and ended with the announcement of an indefinite hiatus.

New projects… and accidents of Dave Grohl

Everyone then took the opportunity to dedicate themselves to their own projects. Grohl makes the documentary “Sound City” on the homonym recording studios and others. Working on the concept of their next album since 2013, they recorded eight songs in eight different American cities (Chicago, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Washington and New York) in the company of local legends, with a specific theme for each. Once again produced by Butch Vig, “Sonic Highways” will be released on November 10, 2014.

A few months later, on June 12, 2015, during a concert at the Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden, Dave Grohl broke his leg when he fell off the stage on the second track of the show. From his stretcher at the foot of the stage, he promises the audience to finish his concert. An hour later, after immobilizing his leg and before going to the hospital for surgery, he decides to return to the stage and end the concert in a chair, or leaning on crutches. However, the group canceled the next two concerts on the tour.

Latest news

On September 15, 2017, Foo Fighters released their ninth studio album Concrete and Gold, which became the band’s second album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200. Following the Concrete and Gold Tour, Grohl announced that the band he would take a break, even though he already had ideas for the band’s next album.

The band’s 10th studio album, Medicine at Midnight, was originally slated for release in 2020, but the album and accompanying tour have been indefinitely delayed due to the COVID-19  pandemic. released on February 5, 2021 and debuted at number three on the Billboard 200.

On the solo side, on 10 August 2018, Grohl released “Play”, a recording lasting over 22 minutes with accompanying mini documentary.

Between August and November 2020, Grohl performed in an online drum battle with ten-year-old drummer and YouTube celebrity Nandi Bushell, who had challenged Grohl. Grohl had previously been impressed by her talent and his energy. After a few challenges, he jokingly conceded the victory, and later wrote and performed a song about her in her honor. Later, after speaking with Bushell during a video chat, Grohl offered to have Bushell perform with the Foo Fighters on stage during their August 26, 2021 show at the LA Forum, where she played drums on “Everlong” as finale of the show. The battery battle videos received tens of millions of views.

At the end of 2021 The Storyteller comes out, a book written by Dave Grohl himself that tells, as the subtitle says, stories of life and music.

Fun facts on Dave Grohl

You must know that Dave Grohl is so eclectic and comes close to divinity thanks also to his “Appearances” in video, not only in music.

Grohl appears in the Autosuggestion episode of the third season of “The X-Files”, in which he can be seen walking, accompanied by his first wife, inside the J. Edgar Hoover building at the FBI. Then look at his watch him.

Dave can be seen in the music video for “I Want You So Hard (Boy’s Bad news)” from “Eagles of Death Metal”. He’s sitting at the bar table, accompanied by Josh Homme and Jack Black (who plays the bartender).

He also appears in the music video of the song No One Knows by  Queens of the Stone Age, for which he provided the drums on the album Songs for the Deaf and also for some concerts.

The artist also stars in the music video for “Tenacious D” and their film “The Pick of Destiny” in which he plays the devil. Again, he appears in the clip To Be The Best published on the occasion of the release of the album Rise of the Fenix, also by Tenacious D.

There is also an appearance in the film The Muppets, the comeback released in 2011.

And finally appears in the documentary film Lemmy about the life of Lemmy Kilmister.

Is there anything this man can’t do? He’s also a philanthropist and advocate of LGBTQ rights. He played at Joe Biden’s induction concert.

During Hanukkah of 2020, Grohl partnered with Greg Kurstin to release covers of previously recorded songs by Jewish artists.

Last but not least, in an interview he stated that he had never used hard drugs. And that he had stopped using marijuana at the age of 20.

Holiness is near, Dave!

#whatelseisthere

#concertofone