The artists Dave Grohl was too intimidated to talk to
Dave Grohl has built up the kind of musical résumé that most fans would kill to have. When looking through his back catalogue, Grohl’s appearances onstage and on record read like a music fan’s bucket list, from getting to jam with Prince to recording a song with Paul McCartney, all while steering the ship forward with Foo Fighters. Although Grohl may be able to play whatever he wants to with those accolades, he did admit feeling intimidated when working with a few rock legends.
That’s not to say that Grohl has an ego about him. Even when working alongside legends like McCartney, Grohl talked about feeling terrified working next to one of his idols, not knowing what he could add to a former Beatle’s song. Throughout his career, Grohl’s strengths have always been his way of adapting to his surroundings.
By the time Nirvana had ended, Grohl’s willingness to record the first Foo Fighters record on his own led to one of the greatest career resurgences in rock and roll history, paving the way for where the genre could go after grunge. For all the tuneful anthems he wrote, though, Grohl still had a taste for all things heavy.
Before joining Nirvana, Grohl was already at the forefront of the underground hardcore punk scene as the drummer in the band Scream. While he may have been able to contribute many rhythmic hooks to Nirvana once Nevermind started to blow up, Grohl never stopped trying to promote his favourite bands, waxing poetic about acts like Kyuss whenever they were on TV.
Having a healthy respect for heavy metal bands, Grohl eventually decided to get a change of scenery after making the album There is Nothing Left to Lose. Since the third Foo Fighters outing had a tuneful edge to it, Probot would be a sharp left turn into heavy metal music, featuring Grohl working with a who’s who of classic metal vocalists, from Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead to Cronos from shock rockers Venom.
Although Grohl was slowly growing into the biggest rock and roll frontman in the world, he wasn’t completely confident in calling his friends to collaborate. According to producer Matt Sweeney, Grohl was terrified at the prospect of talking to anyone about the project, leading to the producer calling up most of the contributing artists.
While Grohl may have been looking to play down his role as the Foo Fighters frontman, most of the artists were already familiar with Grohl’s outfit, as Sweeney told Louder, “Some of them knew Dave already, and if not, they’d heard of Nirvana or Foo Fighters, at least. But Dave was nervous about talking to these guys, and was kinda shy about it, so I made the calls”.
Despite getting a taste of the band’s harsh side on songs like ‘Weenie Beenie’ and ‘Stacked Actors’, Probot features Grohl at his heaviest, leathering the life out of his drumkit while coming up with the most demented riffs that he can muster. Considering that this came out right after songs like ‘Learn to Fly’ were storming the charts, seeing Grohl pull this bait-and-switch proves why he’s one of the most versatile musicians working today.
