The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

by Dave Grohl

Sometimes I forget that I’ve aged. My head and my heart seem to play this cruel trick on me, deceiving me with the false illusion of youth by greeting the world every day through the idealistic, mischievous eyes of a rebellious child finding happiness and appreciation in the most basic, simple things.

I see the heavy bags beneath my hooded eyes from decades of jet lag, of sacrificing sleep for another precious hour of life. I see the patches of white within my beard. And I am thankful for all of it.

That I would celebrate the ensuing years by embracing the toll they’d take on me. That I would aspire to become the rusted-out hot rod, no matter how many jump-starts I might require along the way. Not everything needs a shine, after all.

And each instrument ages entirely differently. To me, that is beauty. Not the gleam of prefabricated perfection, but the road-worn beauty of individuality, time, and wisdom.

Though I have never been one to collect “stuff,” I do collect moments.

DNA is a miraculous thing. We all carry traits of people we have never met somewhere deep within our chemistry. I’m no scientist, but I believe that my musical abilities are proof of this. There is no divine intervention here. This is flesh and blood. This is something that comes from the inside out.

“Now YOU know what it’s like to nervously sit in an audience as YOUR child steps onstage for the first time to follow their life passion with a funny haircut, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.” She was right. THIS WASN’T DIVINE INTERVENTION. THIS WAS FLESH AND BLOOD.

“But, beyond any biological information, there is love. Something that defies all science and reason. And that I am most fortunate to have been given. It’s maybe the most defining factor in anyone’s life. Surely an artist’s greatest muse. And there is no love like a mother’s love. It is life’s greatest song. We are all indebted to the women who have given us life. For without them, there would be no music.”

I was a bit of a misfit, longing to feel understood, waiting for someone to accept the real me.

What could be more inspiring than the exposed nerves of a wounded heart? In a way, I cherish my numerous heartbreaks almost more than the actual love that preceded them, because the heartbreak has always proven to me that I can feel.

“You are only as happy as your unhappiest child.”

You pick yourself up off the ground. You walk home. The show must go on.

There is a theory out there that most musicians decide their creative path in life between the ages of eleven and thirteen. This is the golden window of opportunity where independence and identity intersect, a most treacherous phase in any child’s life where you become your own person, no longer just your parents’ accessory. A time to discover who YOU are, and if you happen to have any sort of musical inclination and drive, chances are you will decide this is who you will be for the rest of your life. A musician. I believe in this theory, because it is exactly what happened to me.

There was a time when music was just a sound to me. Simple nursery rhymes and radio jingles that I would mindlessly sing along to for fun, floating in one ear and out the other. Songs were just intermittent melodies and rhythms that would come and go like the wind, never completely taking hold of my heart, just moving the air that I breathed and filling time between life’s more important moments. UNTIL ONE DAY THEY BECAME THE AIR THAT I BREATHED.

Having no true music training, I didn’t refer to the sound as “notes” on paper; it became shapes that I could see in my head as I listened intently to the multiple layers of instruments. Like colorful building blocks stacked upon each other, music became something that I could “see,” a neurological condition known as synesthesia, where when one sense is activated (hearing) and another unrelated sense (vision) is activated at the same time. My inability to read music sharpened my musical memory, because the only way I could retain information was to take a mental snapshot of it in my head, which honed my ability to focus. It was the handicap of not having lessons or even an actual drum set to learn on that challenged me and made me work even harder to get better, to find a way to succeed. I know that now.

Every musician plays differently, we know this, but there must be something intangible that differentiates the music written on a chart from what is created by one drummer to the next. Is it the way that each mind interprets a pattern? The internal clock that is defined by one’s physical and emotional construct? The way they see the space between the notes? I have watched many producers try to explain and manufacture “feel,” but I am convinced that over-intellectualizing it is futile. It is something divine that only the universe can create, like a heartbeat or a star. A solitary design within every musician that is only their own. I liken “feel” to the cadence of poetry, sometimes comforting, other times unsettling, but always a gift from one soul to another. A romance between the giver and receiver which serves as the punctation of one’s truth.

Though he was technically mind-boggling, I wasn’t so concerned with how he played what he played; I was more interested in why he played what he played.

My biggest concern was my mother, of course. The woman who’d sacrificed so much for me, devoted every second of her life to my personal well-being, and shown me nothing but love from the day I was born. I never wanted to disappoint her, because aside from being my mother, she was my best friend. I couldn’t let her down. I like to say now that she disciplined me with freedom by allowing me to wander, to find my path, and ultimately find myself. I never wanted to sacrifice her trust, so I respected her and always kept it cool. I knew that my leaving school at such a young age would break her heart, but I also knew that staying would break mine. We sat at her desk, and with my head hung in shame, I explained that I wanted to drop out of high school and tour the world. Her response? “YOU’D BETTER BE GOOD.”

I can only think that, after twenty-five years of teaching underachievers like myself, my mother knew deep down I was not college material. But she did have faith in me. She saw the light in me and understood that my heart, soul, and drive were not things you learn from any blackboard or textbook under the hypnotic buzz of the classroom lights. She would often say, “It’s not always the kid that fails the school. Sometimes it’s the school that fails the kid.” So, as she always had, she gave me the freedom to wander, find my path, and find myself.

I will be proud of this album forever, not only because it was my first, but because of its wonderfully unique qualities. There was no one like us.

Being confined to such a small space with so many people for such long periods of time actually benefits the little time you have onstage, because when you finally set up and plug in, you just want to fucking explode. Any angst, frustration, homesickness, or depression that you may feel is taken out on your instrument in a primal fit of rage for that fleeting hour of performance, and if you’re playing loud rock and roll, it doesn’t get any better.

drive it mile by mile, because you not only begin to grasp the immensity of this beautiful country, you see the climate and geography change with every state line. THESE ARE INDEED THINGS THAT CANNOT BE LEARNED FROM AN OLD SCHOOLBOOK UNDER THE COLD CLASSROOM LIGHTS; THEY MUST BE SEEN, HEARD, AND FELT IN PERSON TO BE TRULY APPRECIATED. The education I was getting out here on the road proved to be far more valuable to me than any algebra or biology test I had ever failed, because I was discovering life firsthand, learning social and survival skills I still rely on to this day (e.g., knowing when to speak and when to shut the fuck up).

our paths actually crossed a few times without formal introduction, but that’s how these things tend to happen; you just have to let the universe take the wheel. Thank goodness it did.