Dave Grohl picks out the best-ever band breakup
Nobody is anticipating their favourite band announcing a breakup. Throughout rock history, the biggest implosions among the biggest rock bands in the world feel like they come out of the blue, as if they suddenly decided they had nothing in common and had to move on to new pastures. Although Dave Grohl is no stranger to band fallouts, he admitted that one band knew how to break things up correctly.
Granted, Grohl had been through enough band breakups before becoming famous. When he had signed up to be the drummer in Nirvana, Grohl’s hardcore outfits in Washington, DC, like Freak Baby and Mission Impossible, practically fell apart before they got going. When talking about the biggest breakups in rock history, Grohl thought The Police were the only band that handled everything with class.
When talking about bands that fall out over bad blood, Grohl recalled, “The Police did it right. It’s the greatest because they didn’t even say like, ‘Fuck you, I quit’. They never said a word and disappeared for 20 fucking years. And then it was like, ‘The Police are coming back’. All of us were so excited”.
While The Police had one of the biggest concert draws by the time they released their final album, Synchronicity, they had had enough band tension for a band twice their age. With Sting writing all of the material, the band started branching out into their separate entities while also paying attention to how big they got off the back of songs like ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’.
Although the band may have been criticised for making a wrong business move at the time, Stewart Copeland said that the breakup was done meticulously, telling uDiscovery Music, “As the band grew, we kept making steps to where we go from clubs to theatres. From theatres to arenas, it’s a really big step. The next step is going from 18,000 to 80,000. That’s where you’re getting into Beatles country. There was nowhere up to go, so we figured this is the time to cut and run”.
As Grohl was forming his band out of the ashes of Nirvana, though, Foo Fighters would become a big enough band to rival The Police in terms of commercial success. With fans flocking to their stadium shows, Grohl had reached the most incredible heights any rock band had ever achieved, only to decide to strip things back even further on their next album, Wasting Light, which dealt with songs with an analogue approach to production.
Although Grohl did admit that there can be more than a few pieces of creative tension within any band, he went on to say that Foo Fighters don’t have any inkling of breaking up any time soon, saying, “I always say that it’s like, ‘we can’t break up now’. That’s like your grandparents getting a divorce. What the fuck are they gonna do? We have to just ride it out”. Then again, if any other band tried to call it a day, they probably couldn’t end on top quite like The Police.
