Dave Grohl discusses the “musical love of my life”
For artists like Dave Grohl, music is about much more than just notes on a page. This is a calling beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and when you find someone else speaking your language out in the wild, it’s like falling in love for the first time. Although Grohl has had many musical love affairs over the course of his career, no one has ever quite understood him like Josh Homme has.
Then again, there’s nothing that’s going to divorce Grohl from his work with Foo Fighters. While the band are operating without legendary drummer Taylor Hawkins, the latest incarnation is more or less a story of survival, with Grohl using his songs as a means to cope with one of the most devastating losses of his life.
Even when he was moving on from the death of Kurt Cobain in the 1990s, though, Homme was still present in the background. As far back as the final interviews from Nirvana, Grohl could be heard hyping up Blues for the Red Sun by Kyuss, which featured Homme detuning his guitar to unheard-of levels and creating riffs that fit somewhere between Tony Iommi’s thunderous grooves and something that crawled out of the depths of hell.
Once Homme struck out on his own with Queens of the Stone Age, though, Grohl had found his new favourite act. Aside from performing with them on Songs for the Deaf, every piece of Homme’s new outfit radiated the kind of rock and roll swagger that seemed to go out of style the minute that Cobain started a mosh pit in the middle of a gymnasium.
While Grohl was instrumental in bringing an end to the superficial side of rock and roll, he fit right in with the warped coolness of Homme, telling Uncut, “Josh and I playing together, that’s the musical love of my life. Foo Fighters are like a family – we do what we do, and we do it well, but musically, when Josh and I get together to do something, it’s always really special. We run in the same circles, but we’re at different cycles, and we talk about all these projects that we wanna do.”
Then again, Homme’s presence would tear a little bit of a hole in Foo Fighters for a brief time. When Hawkins was recuperating from an overdose in the 2000s, Grohl’s decision to put the group on ice as he went and played with QOTSA never sat well with him, leading to a massive argument that almost broke them up for a few years.
Like any family, though, Grohl was able to make up, eventually penning ‘Times Like These’ during the tour with Homme because of how much he missed his old buddies. But that was just the first germ of Grohl and Homme working together, and everything from Them Crooked Vultures to ‘My God is the Sun’ is proof that they haven’t lost their touch either.
While Grohl is usually down for playing on any record that will have him, performing alongside Homme is the equivalent of moving to the big leagues. Foo Fighters might be Grohl’s baby, but he knows that all bets are off whenever he gets behind the drumkit and Homme straps on his guitar.
