The one band Dave Grohl wanted to sell his soul to: “This freaky seance thing”
Rock and roll meant a lot more to Dave Grohl than his favourite music.
Anyone can be inspired by their favourite guitarist to pick up a six-string of their own and start to make the best music that they can think of, but growing up in Virginia, Grohl felt that there was much more to life than a bunch of chords and a few nice harmonies. To be a member of a rock and roll band may as well have been a higher calling, and he knew that some of the biggest names in music were the closest thing to gods that he was ever going to see.
But when Grohl was first strumming away with a Beatles songbook in his hand, it’s not like he was trying to be as big as Paul McCartney. Whenever anyone’s slaving away in their garage trying to make the best music they can, there’s no way that they’re going to be in the biggest band in the world, but somewhere along the line, Grohl’s work for Nirvana cemented him in rock history before he even showed the world any of his songs.
And listening to the kind of fills he played on Nevermind, Grohl was clearly a fan of what Ringo Starr did whenever he played the drums. He never overplays on tracks like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Come As You Are’, and even when he played the odd drum part in a Foo Fighters song, he knew when to give the track a little bit of punch and when they needed to dial things back a little bit.
There’s a lot of Ringo Starr influence in his playing, but if there were any true gods in his world, they were bound to be Led Zeppelin, saying, “I have John Bonham tattoos…one on my wrist, one on my shoulder, another on my shoulder. This is the first time I’ve ever said this in an interview. When I was a kid, I actually had this freaky seance thing where I lit all these candles and I was sitting in front of this three-circled thing, like I sold my soul to Led Zeppelin.”
That level of worship might come off as a touch creepy in anyone else’s hands, but when looking at Grohl’s track record, it’s not like he didn’t 100% believe in it. Bonham was an absolute monster whenever he played, and you can hear that same muscle listening to Grohl on Queens of the Stone Age’s Songs for the Deaf, but it was much more about the complete package than one kickass drummer.
Going through the band’s discography, Grohl felt a kinship with that music as the soundtrack to his teenage years. He admitted that he would have never been able to get through high school without the help of Led Zeppelin III, but beyond being an inspiration, he knew that there was a spiritual connection there that no other band could quite put their finger on.
That may have been intentional given Jimmy Page’s interest in the occult, but Grohl knew there was nothing malicious about what Zeppelin gave to the world, either, explaining, “To me, Zeppelin were spiritually inspirational. I was going to Catholic school and questioning God, but I believed in Led Zeppelin. I had faith in Led Zeppelin as a spiritual entity.” And while that sentence alone may strike fear in the hearts of the people that swore that ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was demonic, it’s not like it’s completely untrue, either.
Zeppelin were able to make legions of fans believe that there was a future for rock and roll beyond the Summer of Love, and when psychedelia faded, there was an entire army that was falling head over heels for tunes like ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’. Rock and roll had been called a fad before, but with artists like Zeppelin around, Grohl knew that his musical vocation was never going to die.
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