The 1977 song Dave Grohl called “one of the greatest of all time”
Dave Grohl has always prided himself on being an eclectic fan of rock music.
Throughout his time in the spotlight, Grohl’s resume has included some of the most fascinating left turns that any musician could muster, playing with everyone from Tenacious D to Queens of the Stone Age to Nine Inch Nails while being known for working in Nirvana and Foo Fighters. Despite Grohl’s unique musical sensibilities, every part of his musical vocabulary returned to the punk rock world.
Before Grohl had even heard of the heavy sounds of bands like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath, his melodic sensibilities began with The Beatles. Armed with a guitar and a songbook on the Fab Four’s greatest tunes, Grohl would spend his first years hashing away at every song he could, trying to get it to sound right.
What those early experiences really gave him was an understanding of structure before attitude entered the picture. The Beatles’ catalogue offered more than just catchy melodies, it presented a blueprint for how songs could be built, shifted, and resolved without losing their core identity. Even at a young age, Grohl was internalising those patterns, storing away ideas about pacing and dynamics that would later resurface in his own writing.
There was also a patience to that period of learning that often gets overlooked when discussing punk musicians. Before the volume and velocity took hold, Grohl was spending hours refining small details, focusing on getting chords to ring out properly and transitions to feel natural.
It may not have seemed significant at the time, but that attention to craft laid the groundwork for everything that followed, ensuring that when he did embrace heavier sounds, there was always a sense of purpose behind the noise.
Once he started to hear the sounds of groups like Kiss and Aerosmith, though, Grohl began to listen to what else the genre had to offer. Aside from the great sing-alongs from John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Grohl would become a hardened rock fan, being transformed after listening to bands like Led Zeppelin for the first time.
Even though many aspiring musicians found it difficult to play the intricate solos of their favourite acts, another genre was rising to turn the hard rock world on its head. After years of progressive rock dominating the album charts, the punk movement was a firm stance against the status quo, featuring bands designed to play the bare essentials whenever they took to the stage.
While Ramones may have gotten everything started in America, the movement didn’t reach its zenith until Sex Pistols unleashed their album Nevermind the Bollocks. Being one of the first significant punk releases of its time, John Lydon created some of the most scathing lyrics that anyone had ever heard, wanting nothing more than to reduce the previous generation of rock and roll to ash beneath his feet.
When listening to the album for the first time, Grohl was transfixed by what could be done with just a bunch of chords. Although it may not have been as complex as The Beatles or Led Zeppelin, Grohl thought that the album deserved a spot among the greatest albums to come from a rock and roll band.
Speaking about the longevity of the record, Grohl would single out ‘God Save the Queen’ as one of the most important records ever made, telling NME, “Name one rock musician who doesn’t consider that to be one of the greatest rock’n’roll records of all time. That’s a classic, and it inspired everybody to do what we’re doing right now.”
Even though Lydon was set on burning down everything in his path, Grohl took a more lighthearted approach to the punk ethos. Outside of the different fashion statements of punk, Grohl knew that the power behind the music came from the feeling inside rather than any type of outward aggression. Punk may have been about playing simple music, but Grohl knew it was the shape of his heart that would influence the sounds of generations to come.
