Dave Grohl named his five favourite hardcore bands
If there’s one area that Dave Grohl knows more than most, it is the original wave of hardcore punk. In his days before Nirvana and as the leader of Foo Fighters, he was the teenage drumming prodigy of revered D.C. hardcore outfit Scream, a group he famously dropped out of school at age 17 to tour the world with. Alas, it proved a momentous decision and opened the door to him becoming the legend we all know and love today.
Given that Grohl was a part of hardcore’s first chapter before it became the multifaceted behemoth it is today, he has been asked at points to name his favourite bands from the scene. Unsurprisingly, like many of his generation and those that followed, Grohl cites two of hardcore’s defining heavyweights as his favourites – Minor Threat and Bad Brains – as well as crossover legends Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (D.R.I.), another widely influential unit.
When speaking to Melody Maker in 1997, Grohl listed his five favourite hardcore bands and provided accounts of why. The first of his collection was Bad Brains, one of the quintessential D.C. bands. The former Nirvana man was quick to point out how effective their hardcore-reggae blend was. He said: “Bad Brains were just totally fuckin’ incredible. They were the best fuckin’ live band in the world. They were these four hyperactive young black men from Washington DC and they could play the most incredible fuckin’ hardcore, then slip into the most beautiful, graceful reggae. They were just so incredibly talented.”
Next up was another D.C. act, the short-lived Void, active from 1979 to 1984. One of the first bands from the scene to fuse punk and heavy metal elements in an acceptable way, Grohl recalled that part of their brilliance was their laissez-faire approach to their instruments: “Void were a band from DC who were sort of like a metal band that couldn’t play their instruments so good,” he said. “They were great live. Their singer was this drunken construction worker. They were amazing, they were fuckin’ great.”
From one crossover band to another, Grohl chose D.R.I., and lamented losing a 22-song seven-inch record he had by them, which he purchased from their frontman Kurt Brecht at a 1982 show. Grohl said: “The first record they put out was a 22-song seven-inch. I bought it from the lead singer at one of their shows in about ’82, and I fucking wish I still had it, because it’s the most incredible thing in the world. Some of their songs were like 11 seconds long. An epic would be a minute and five seconds long. That would be their ‘Stairway To Heaven’.”
The penultimate choice of the Foo Fighters frontman was the Chicago punk legends Naked Raygun, a group known for their fusion of punk, post-punk and post-hardcore. The first punk group Grohl ever saw live, they made a tremendous impact on him, to the extent that they would open for Foo Fighters years later. Grohl said: “Naked Raygun were the first punk rock band I ever saw, in Chicago. They had this weird sort of surf edge to them, and their songs were clever and witty. They just fucking rocked.”
The Foo Fighters frontman’s final pick was Ian MacKaye’s straight edge pioneers, Minor Threat. Undoubtedly the most significant band in hardcore history, many of the genre’s central musical and ethical tenets are traced back to their efforts. What’s most remarkable about the group is that they were only active for three years, from 1980 to 1983. Grohl explained: “They sort of made hardcore what it is, with Ian’s vocals and the whole straight-edge ‘no drink-no drugs’ thing. They started a new era. Although they were kind of minimalist about it, they were really talented musicians and they rocked.”
Dave Grohl’s favourite hardcore bands:
- Bad Brains
- Void
- Dirty Rotten Imbeciles (D.R.I.)
- Naked Raygun
- Minor Threat
