The band Dave Grohl called his version of God: “My church”
There are few success stories in rock quite like Dave Grohl‘s. Joining Nirvana in 1990 while Nevermind‘s chart-topping domination was still an unthinkable dream, Grohl’s powerhouse drumming heft saw the band through their classic run until frontman Kurt Cobain’s violent death at his own hand in April 1994.
Having some tentative songwriting history with the Pocketwatch sessions, a rejection of band membership offers from Danzig to Tom Petty saw Grohl enter the studio to cut 1995’s Foo Fighters, with nearly everything played and recorded himself.
With his new project expanded to a fully-fledged band and touring project, Foo Fighters would go on to dominate the alternative world as the decade passed into the 2000s, winning a legion of fans enamoured with their stadium-ready hard rock. It wouldn’t take long for Foo Fighters to cross paths with another band of the day who similarly held an authentic footing in rock’s classic era long before post-grunge and nu-metal awfulness.
Dropping their acclaimed Songs for the Deaf in 2002, Queens of the Stone Age recruited Grohl’s drumming heft for the album’s sessions and toured with them on the supporting tour.
Jump to the end of the decade, and both bands had cemented themselves as hard rock royalty, and both Grohl and Queens frontman Josh Homme were eager to join forces once again. Triggering a mutual pinch-yourself moment, the two Led Zeppelin nuts brought the bassist and multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones to California in 2009 for the Them Crooked Vultures power trio project, dropping their eponymous album in November. For Grohl, a boyhood dream had been realised, jamming with a Zeppelin legend as well as playing alongside a living link to his drumming hero John Bonham.
“You realise that I am playing with John Paul Jones,” Grohl revealed to Modern Drummer in 2010. “That has everything to do with why I played the way I did on the album. I am a Zeppelinologist. I grew up worshipping that band like they were my church. I didn’t go to church-I listened to Led Zeppelin, and that was all I needed. They were God to me. I learned a lot about groove and drumming and feel from those albums. When I listened to those records I didn’t want to know exactly how Bonham did what he did-I wanted to know why he did what he did”.
Few bands in rock can profess to have not been shaped by Led Zeppelin’s gargantuan album run across the 1970s. Yet, while guitarist Jimmy Page offered the riffs and production, and Plant the commanding bellow and sex appeal, Jones gifted the band their exotic edge, putting his exhaustive sessions history to use as an arranger and deft knack for a myriad of instruments across mandolins to Moog synthesizers. The rich and colourful textures that imbue Zeppelin’s golden album run are largely owed to Jones’ dextrous musical magic.
While talks of a sophomore effort were mooted, scheduling conflicts forever obstructed a follow-up album. It would take Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins’ death in 2022 to see the trio return to the stage, playing both tribute shows in London’s Wembley Stadium and Los Angeles’ KIA Forum performing ‘Gunman’ and ‘Dead End Friends’ respectively.
