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.

There is a saying: “You are only as happy as your unhappiest child.”

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.

we began the final preparations to make our thousand-mile trek down to Los Angeles. A few more rehearsals, a few more boom box recordings of new song ideas, and we were good to go. Well, almost good to go. We needed gas money. We hastily booked a last-minute show at a small club in downtown Seattle called the OK Hotel, hoping that it would pull enough dough to fill our tanks and get us to Sound City without breaking down on the side of the highway. It was April 17, 1991, and the small room was thankfully packed with sweaty kids waiting to hear their favorite Nirvana songs. “School,” “Negative Creep,” “About a Girl,” “Floyd the Barber”—these were all familiar to the die-hard fans who adored Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, so we delivered them with our usual manic abandon, beating our instruments to within an inch of their lives as the crowd sang every word. Just like every other Nirvana show I had played, it was practically transcendent. But, rather than just stick with the trusted back catalog, that night we decided to try a new song that no one in that room had ever heard before. A song we had written over the winter in that cold little barn in Tacoma. Kurt approached the mike and announced, “This song is called ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’” Crickets. He then launched into the opening riff, and as Krist and I broke into the song, the room absolutely exploded. Bodies bouncing, people on top of people, a sea of denim and wet flannel before us. Reassuring, to say the least, and...

You cannot predict a person’s sudden passing, but there are certain people in life that you prepare yourself to lose, for whatever reason. You foolishly try to protect yourself by building a wall around your heart as a sort of preemptive defense mechanism so that when you get that call, you are prepared somehow. Like being emotionally vaccinated, you have already built up an immunity to their inevitable passing. But this never works.

“Empathy!” Kurt wrote in his suicide note, and there were times where I would beg my heart to feel the pain he must have felt. Ask for it to break. I would try to wring the tears from my eyes as I cursed those fucking walls I had built so high, because they kept me from the feelings I desperately needed to feel.

I felt ashamed at times that I could not feel, but eventually I accepted that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is no textbook, no manual to refer to when in need of emotional guidance. It is a process that cannot be controlled, and you are hopelessly at the mercy of its grip, so you must surrender to it when it rears its ugly head, no matter the fear. Over the years, I have come to terms with this. To this day I am often overcome with that same profound sadness that sent me to the floor the first time I was told Kurt had died. Is it time that dictates the depth of your grief when losing someone? Is the emotional relevance simply determined by the number of days that you spent together? Those three and a half years that I knew Kurt, a relatively small window of time in the chronology of my life, shaped and in some ways still define who I am today. I will always be “that guy from Nirvana,” and I am proud of it.

it’s when I sit down at a drum set that I feel Kurt the most. It’s not often that I play the songs that we played together, but when I sit on that stool, I can still picture him in front of me, wrestling with his guitar as he screamed his lungs raw into the microphone. Just like staring at the sun will burn a spot into your retinas, his image will forever be burned in mine when I look past my drums to the audience before me. He will always be there.

After Kurt’s death, I was lost. We all were. With our world pulled out from under us in such a sudden, traumatic manner, it was hard to find any direction or beacon that would help guide us through the fog of tremendous sadness and loss. And the fact that Kurt, Krist, and I were all connected by music made any music seem bittersweet. What was once my life’s greatest joy had now become my life’s greatest sorrow, and not only did I put my instruments away, I turned off the radio, for fear that even the slightest melody would trigger paralyzing grief. It was the first time in my life that I rejected music. I just couldn’t afford to let it break my heart again.

Having been a UFO fanatic my entire life, I took a simple phrase from a book I was reading at the time, Above Top Secret, which was a collection of UFO sighting reports and accounts from the military dating back to the early forties. In a chapter about unidentified craft over Europe and the Pacific during World War II, I found a term that the military used as a nickname for these unexplained glowing balls of light and thought it was just mysterious enough for me. Not only did it sound like a group of people, it almost sounded like a gang: Foo Fighters.

The show was great. We rocked both songs with groove and intensity, and in the short week and a half that we had known each other, I was starting to feel surprisingly comfortable within the band’s laid-back dynamic, something that I had never even gotten close to feeling in the three and a half years I was in Nirvana. The awkward dysfunction of Nirvana definitely made for quite a noise, but the sense of family and community in the Heartbreakers’ camp seemed so much healthier and less chaotic. This was exactly what I needed to soothe my past traumas, and a great reminder that music does represent joy and life and celebration. This was a perfect one-off to get me back on my feet, I thought.

On Dave’s time playing with Tom Petty

I was obsessed with AM Gold music at the time (soft rock hits from the seventies), perhaps revisiting that magical era because it reminded me of growing up listening to the radio as I drove the same streets that I had returned to. Andrew Gold, Gerry Rafferty, Peter Frampton, Helen Reddy, Phoebe Snow—those rich, melancholy melodies were making their way into our new songs. Popular rock music at the time had turned its focus to a new genre, nu metal, which I appreciated but wanted to be the antithesis of, so I intentionally moved in the opposite direction. There was a glaring absence of melody in most nu metal songs, and it was my love of melody (inspired by the Beatles from an early age) that led me to write from a much gentler place. That, coupled with the overwhelming feeling of rebirth that the Virginia spring ushered in, gave way to songs like “Ain’t It the Life,” “Learn to Fly,” “Aurora,” and “Generator,” all great examples of a man finally comfortable in his surroundings, no longer wandering but somewhere he belonged. By the end of our sessions in June, we had made what I still to this day consider to be our best album, the aptly titled There Is Nothing Left to Lose

my mother imparted a little bit of her well-earned wisdom that has since proven to be one of my life’s most indisputable truths: “The relationship between a father and daughter can be one of the most special relationships in any girl’s life.”

Life is just too damn short to let someone else’s opinion steer the wheel, I thought.

as the stage was being readied, we all made friends with the kind White House staff of security guards and electricians. The one bit of sage advice I remember: “If you guys need to use the restrooms, there’s one over there and one over there. Whatever you do, don’t go pee in the bushes. There are people in the bushes.” Noted.

I walk through this crazy life of a musician like a little boy in a museum, surrounded by the exhibits I’ve spent a lifetime studying. And when I finally come face-to-face with someone who has inspired me along the way, I am thankful. I am grateful. And I take none of it for granted. I am a firm believer in the shared humanity of music, something that I find more rewarding than any other aspect of what I do. When the one-dimensional image becomes a living, breathing, three-dimensional human being, it fills your soul with reassurance that even our most cherished heroes are flesh and bone. I believe that people are inspired by people. That is why I feel the need to connect with my fans when they approach me. I’m a fan too.

IN A WORLD FULL OF BARBIES, EVERY GIRL NEEDS A JOAN JETT.

Courage is a defining factor in the life of any artist. The courage to bare your innermost feelings, to reveal your true voice, or to stand in front of an audience and lay it out there for the world to see. The emotional vulnerability that is often necessary to summon a great song can also work against you when sharing your song for the world to hear. This is the paralyzing conflict of any sensitive artist. A feeling I’ve experienced with every lyric I’ve sung to someone other than myself. Will they like it? Am I good enough? It is the courage to be yourself that bridges those opposing emotions, and when it does, magic can happen.

This was my great awakening, and dreams were no longer dreams; they became my divining rod. I was an idealistic misfit, empowered by the audacity of faith and a reckless determination to do it my way. Punk rock became my professor in a school with no rules, only teaching the lesson that you need no lessons and that every person has a voice to be heard, no matter the sound. I have built a life on this notion

Tearing through the room like an F5 tornado of hyperactive joy was Taylor Hawkins, my brother from another mother, my best friend, a man for whom I would take a bullet. Upon first meeting, our bond was immediate, and we grew closer with every day, every song, every note that we ever played together. I am not afraid to say that our chance meeting was a kind of love at first sight, igniting a musical “twin flame” that still burns to this day. Together, we have become an unstoppable duo, onstage and off, in pursuit of any and all adventure we can find. We are absolutely meant to be, and I am grateful that we found each other in this lifetime.

And Kurt. If only he could have seen the joy that his music brought to the world, maybe he could have found his own. My life was forever changed by Kurt, something I never had the chance to say while he was still with us, and not thanking him for that is a regret I will have to live with until we are somehow reunited. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of our time together, and when we meet in my dreams there’s always a feeling of happiness and calm, almost as if he’s just been hiding, waiting to return.