Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl
David Eric "Dave" Grohl is an American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer. He is best known as the former drummer for the grunge band Nirvana and the founder and frontman of the rock band Foo Fighters, of which he is the lead singer, one of three guitarists, and primary songwriter...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth14 January 1969
CityWarren, OH
CountryUnited States of America
Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America - land of the free, home of the brave.
When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn't see any rock & roll bands.
When you're recording to tape, you usually just settle for what you have. There's not a lot of options to manipulate the performance.
I think musicians like me are drawn to those older desks, not just because they're legend and lore but also because they do something really specific that is hard to emulate or re-create digitally.
You can make yourself the greatest singer in the world or the best drummer in the world with the aid of technology.
It's funny, there aren't too many musicians that also moonlight as studio engineers. There's a few - the really brilliant ones.
The late '60s and the '70s, a lot of this really beautiful equipment was being made and installed into studios around the world and the Neve boards were considered like the Cadillacs of recording consoles. They're these really big, behemoth-looking recording desks; they kind of look like they're from the Enterprise in Star Trek or something like that. They're like a grayish color, sort of like an old Army tank with lots of knobs, and to any studio geek or gear enthusiast it's like the coolest toy in the world.
A place like Sound City, which was just a big, beautiful room where you would hit record and capture the sound of the performer - a place like that isn't necessarily in demand anymore.
The Nirvana unplugged album was something we'd always knew we were capable of doing, but it was just a matter of doing it right.
A long time ago, I made a promise to myself: "Okay, you know what? I'm going to play music, and hopefully I'll make enough money that I can go back to school. Once I make enough money to put myself through school, that's what I'm going to do."
It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.
After 10 years, I have been touring for 20, playing basically the same type of music, a four-piece or three-piece type of music with loud, crashing drums and screaming vocals. It gets to the point where you're looking for something new, and you don't want to do something that's way too left-field, for fear that it might seem contrived.
Ramones or AC/DC are two bands that have managed to keep their signature sound and their signature formula for years and years and album after album after album, without it seeming like a dead-end street.