The one band Dave Grohl felt sorry for: “They’re the only people”
Infidelity aside, Dave Grohl has garnered a pretty healthy reputation as the excited uncle of rock and roll. In his early years, he was an unashamed worshipper of the greats in Black Sabbath, ACDC, and Led Zeppelin before becoming a musical arrowhead with Nirvana and Foo Fighters. His trace in the lineage of classic rock can be easily found.
Despite his success, he’s never shied away from being a musical nerd. You’re more likely to find him at the front row of a rival gig than drinking in the green room, slagging them off. In fact, despite being the drummer of America’s biggest band in the 1990s, he has made no bones about his undying love for Britain’s biggest band of the same decade.
And amidst his regular attendance to some of Liam and Noel’s solo shows over the past years, he even had time to proclaim: “I love Oasis. There’s no way that you can’t love them because they make such excellent fucking music. There are really very few bands that make it that difficult to hate them just by being so fucking good.”
While he didn’t make the cut to play drums for Oasis on their upcoming reunion tour, he has had plenty of opportunities to share the stage with his fellow icons. In fact, when John Paul Jones phoned him up and asked him to play the drums, he didn’t play it cool and pitifully agreed; he admitted that it was the opportunity to play in his dream band.
Ultimately, Grohl’s reputation of coolness hinges on his disinterest in playing anything cool and instead seizes each moment that’s presented to him. “That’s one of the great things about being a musician,” he told Dermot O’Leary in a 2005 interview before explaining that he sympathises with musicians who don’t take the chance to live out similar dreams.
Adding, “I feel sorry for the guys in U2; they’re the only people they’ve played with for 30 years or something. One of the great things about being a musician is playing with other musicians. Whether I’m playing drums on a NIN record or John Paul Jones is coming in to jam with my band, it’s great to experience that ‘thing’ with other people. And when you get someone like John Paul Jones coming into your studio to play on your song, and I’m sitting there showing him how to play a song I’ve written – it doesn’t get any better than that.”
It’s that sort of wide-eyed enthusiasm that has fans desperately following his every move because, in many ways, he’s representing the everyman in his experience of musical stardom. It is no surprise that Grohl leaps at the chance when given the opportunity to pay it forward. Whether it’s Taylor Hawkins’ son or Billie Eilish at Glastonbury, he’s as interested in the intriguing musical future as he is in the informative musical past.
