Dave Grohl

David Eric Grohl (; born January 14, 1969) is an American musician. He founded the rock band Foo Fighters, of which he is the lead singer, guitarist, principal songwriter, and only consistent member. From 1990 to 1994, he was the drummer of the grunge band Nirvana.

In 1986, at age 17, Grohl joined the punk rock band Scream, replacing drummer Kent Stax. After Scream broke up in 1990, Grohl became the drummer for Nirvana. He first appeared on the band's second album, Nevermind (1991). After the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain, Nirvana disbanded and Grohl formed Foo Fighters as a one-man project. After he released the album Foo Fighters in 1995, he assembled a full band to tour and record under the Foo Fighters name. They have since released 11 studio albums.

Grohl is also the drummer and co-founder of the rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, and has recorded and toured with Queens of the Stone Age and Tenacious D. He has organized side projects Late!, which released the album Pocketwatch, and Probot. Grohl began directing Foo Fighters music videos in 1997. He released his debut documentary, Sound City, in 2013, followed by the 2014 documentary miniseries Sonic Highways and the 2021 documentary film What Drives Us. In 2021, Grohl released an autobiography, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music. In 2022, he and the Foo Fighters starred as themselves in the comedy horror film Studio 666.

In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked Grohl the 27th-best drummer of all time. Grohl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of Nirvana in 2014 and as a member of Foo Fighters in 2021.

Early life

Grohl was born in Warren, Ohio, on January 14, 1969, the son of teacher Virginia Jean (née Hanlon) and newswriter James Harper Grohl. He is of German, Slovak (on his father's side), Irish, and English (on his mother's side) descent. His father, James, was a journalist and the special assistant to U.S. Senator Robert Taft Jr. James was described as "a talented political observer who possessed the ability to call every major election with uncanny accuracy". When he was a child, Grohl's family moved to Springfield, Virginia. When he was seven, his parents divorced, and he was subsequently raised by his mother. At the age of 12, he began learning to play guitar. He grew tired of lessons and instead taught himself, eventually playing in bands with friends. He said, "I was going in the direction of faster, louder, darker while my sister, Lisa, three years older, was getting seriously into new wave territory. We'd meet in the middle sometimes with Bowie and Siouxsie and the Banshees."

At 13, Grohl and his sister spent the summer at their cousin Tracey's house in Evanston, Illinois. Tracey introduced them to punk rock by taking the pair to shows by a variety of punk bands. His first concert was Naked Raygun at The Cubby Bear in Chicago in 1982. Grohl recalled, "From then on we were totally punk. We went home and bought Maximumrocknroll and tried to figure it all out." In Virginia, he attended Thomas Jefferson High School as a freshman, and was elected class vice president. In that capacity, he managed to play pieces of songs by punk bands like Circle Jerks and Bad Brains over the school intercom before his morning announcements. His mother decided he should transfer to Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria because his cannabis use was lowering his grades. He stayed there for two years, beginning with a repeat of his first year. After his second year, he transferred yet again to Annandale High School. While in high school, he played in several local bands, including a stint as guitarist in a band called Freak Baby, and taught himself to play drums. When Freak Baby fired its bass player and reshuffled its lineup, Grohl switched to drums. The reconstituted band renamed itself Mission Impossible.

Grohl said he did not take formal drum lessons; instead, he taught himself how to play the drums by listening to Rush and punk rock. Rush drummer Neil Peart was an early influence: "When I got 2112 when I was eight years old, it fucking changed the direction of my life. I heard the drums. It made me want to become a drummer." During his developing years as a drummer, Grohl cited John Bonham as his greatest influence, and eventually had Bonham's three-rings symbol tattooed on his right shoulder. Mission Impossible rebranded themselves Fast before breaking up, after which Grohl joined the hardcore punk band Dain Bramage in December 1985. In March 1987, Dain Bramage ended when Grohl quit without warning to join Scream, having produced the I Scream Not Coming Down LP. Many of Grohl's early influences were at the 9:30 Club, a music venue in Washington, D.C. In April 2010, he said, "I went to the 9:30 Club hundreds of times. I was always so excited to get there, and I was always bummed when it closed. I spent my teenage years at the club and saw some shows that changed my life."

Career

Scream (1986–1990)

As a teenager in Washington, D.C., Grohl briefly contemplated joining Gwar, a shock rock band that was seeking a drummer. At age 17, he auditioned for the local band Scream after the departure of the drummer, Kent Stax. Grohl lied about his age, claiming he was older. To his surprise, the band asked him to join, so he dropped out of high school in his junior year. He said: "I was 17 and extremely anxious to see the world, so I did it."

Over the next four years, Grohl toured extensively with Scream, recording a live album (their show of May 4, 1990, in Alzey, Germany, being released by Tobby Holzinger as Your Choice Live Series Vol.10) and two studio albums, No More Censorship and Fumble, for which Grohl wrote and sang "Gods Look Down". During a Toronto stop on their 1987 tour, Grohl played drums for Iggy Pop at a CD release party held at El Mocambo. In 1990, Scream unexpectedly disbanded mid-tour following the departure of their bassist, Skeeter Thompson.

Nirvana (1990–1994)

While playing in Scream, Grohl became a fan of the Melvins and eventually befriended them. During a 1990 tour stop on the West Coast, the Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne took his friends Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, members of Nirvana, to see a Scream performance. In October 2010, Grohl told Q, "I remember being in the same room with them and thinking, 'What? That's Nirvana? Are you kidding?' Because on their record cover they looked like psycho lumberjacks... I was like, 'What, that little dude and that big motherfucker? You're kidding me.'" Following the breakup of Scream, Grohl called Osborne for advice. Osborne informed him that Nirvana was seeking a drummer, and gave Grohl the phone numbers of Cobain and Novoselic, who invited Grohl to Seattle to audition. Grohl soon joined.

Nirvana had already recorded several demos for the followup to their 1989 debut album, Bleach, and had spent time recording with the producer Butch Vig in Wisconsin. Initially, the plan was to release the album on Sub Pop, but Nirvana received a great deal of interest based on the demos. Grohl spent the initial months with Nirvana traveling to various labels to discuss record deals, and signed with DGC Records.

In early 1991, the band entered Sound City Studios in Los Angeles to record Nevermind, which is depicted in Grohl's 2013 documentary Sound City. Nevermind (1991) exceeded all expectations and became a worldwide commercial success. At the same time, Grohl was compiling and recording his own material, which he released on a cassette, Pocketwatch in 1992, on the indie label Simple Machines. Grohl released the cassette under the pseudonym "Late!"

In the later years with Nirvana, Grohl's songwriting contributions to the band increased. In Grohl's initial months in Olympia, Washington, Cobain overheard him working on the song "Color Pictures of a Marigold", and the two subsequently worked on it together. Grohl later recorded the song for the Pocketwatch cassette. Grohl said in a 2014 episode of Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways that Cobain reacted by kissing him upon first hearing a demo of "Alone + Easy Target" that Grohl had recently recorded.

During the sessions for In Utero, Nirvana rerecorded "Color Pictures of a Marigold" and released it as a B-side on the "Heart-Shaped Box" single, retitled "Marigold". Grohl also contributed the riff for "Scentless Apprentice". Cobain said in a 1993 interview with MTV that he initially thought the riff was "kind of boneheaded", but was gratified at how the song developed, a process captured in part in a demo on the Nirvana box set With the Lights Out. Cobain said that he was excited at the possibility of having Novoselic and Grohl contribute more to the band's songwriting.

Prior to Nirvana's 1994 European tour, the band scheduled session time at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle to work on demos. For most of the three-day session, Cobain was absent, so Novoselic and Grohl worked on demos of their own songs. They completed several of Grohl's songs, including the future Foo Fighters songs "Exhausted", "Big Me", "February Stars", and "Butterflies". Cobain arrived on the third day, and the band recorded a demo of "You Know You're Right". It was Nirvana's final studio recording before the suicide of Cobain on April 5, 1994. On April 10, 2014, Grohl was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Nirvana.