“Like being knighted”: Dave Grohl on how Bob Dylan made rock “bad-ass”
There’s always a certain mantle of cool placed around every single classic rock band. Even if no one cared about the music that Led Zeppelin or The Beatles made during their time together, it’s hard to look at any of their music and not see the thin layer of badassery on display whenever a tune like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ or ‘Revolution’ starts. Dave Grohl may be too humble to consider himself cool, but he felt that this artist made it okay for rock and rollers to carry themselves with the right kind of swagger.
Looking back on where Grohl had been before Foo Fighters, though, nothing had more staying power than Nirvana in the early 1990s. Despite the millions of hair metal bands that were left without jobs once ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ kicked into high gear, the beauty of Kurt Cobain was the fact that he didn’t present himself as a rock star. He was simply someone you could hang out with, and that was more than enough for the rest of the world.
Even when Grohl started up his own band following Cobain’s passing, he wasn’t looking to be one of the biggest frontmen in the world. He was still making music strictly because he loved to make it, and no matter how far his star continued to rise, it meant enough to him to make it on his own rather than trying to fill stadiums with people.
Then again, the common thread among rock stars is to not go along with the program, and that was something that Bob Dylan did as if it were second nature. Throughout his time as a recovering folkie, he was used to going up against the injustices of the world, but right when the musicians around him started to turn their noses up at rock and roll, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ turned everything on its head.
Suddenly, people with electric guitars could be taken more seriously, and that one song set off an entire revolution of kids who thought they could change the world through their instruments. While Grohl’s lyrics in Foo Fighters were a far cry from the poetry of Dylan’s work, it’s not like he could ignore the impact that he made when the band were asked to open for him in the 2000s.
For Grohl, it was an honour to even be in the presence of Dylan during that tour, eventually saying, “We don’t usually jump on other people’s tours because we’re out doing our own thing. But being asked by Bob Dylan to go on the road with him is like being knighted or something. How could we say no? We were asked by the man who turned rock ‘n’ roll from boogie-woogie into bad-ass. Respect and honour, and for us, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
And if the musical knighthood wasn’t enough, getting Dylan to express his love for Foo Fighters songs would have been enough to reduce anyone else to a puddle. Despite Grohl’s love of classic rock, he also remembered Dylan pulling himself aside to say that he wanted to cover the song ‘Everlong’ during the tour because he loved the way it was constructed.
While many musicians who have worked with him only refer to him as their old friend Bob, Grohl knew how important it was to be given Dylan’s seal of approval. This was practically a piece of music history in the flesh, and he was never going to take a second of that for granted.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.