Dancing for eight hours a day: the David Bowie masterpiece that stole Dave Grohl’s heart
On stage and in interviews, the Foo Fighters kingpin Dave Grohl conveys an endlessly affable demeanour and utmost respect for his fellow rock stars. Celebrities can often put on a front for public exposure, but Grohl’s profile and myriad friendships in the industry testify humbleness to the very core.
As a child, Grohl became fascinated with the Beatles and would drum along to Ringo Starr’s rhythm until his fingers blistered and bled. Through his ten years, Grohl embraced punk and metal and even became Prince’s biggest fan, but he maintained the most profound respect for classic British rock artists like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and David Bowie.
After achieving global fame as the drummer of Nirvana and later fronting Foo Fighters, Grohl was fortunate enough to acquaint some of his idols, including Paul McCartney and the late Bowie. The latter invited Grohl to play guitar on his 2002 cover of Neil Young’s ‘I’ve Been Waiting for You’, which appeared on Heathen.
Having idolised Bowie from childhood, Grohl had to pinch himself during these sessions. “I mean, there’s just nobody cooler than Bowie, he was whether he was on stage, off stage… in the studio,” Grohl told Sky in 2021, reflecting on the experience. “Even his emails were cool. There’s nobody cooler,” he mused.
Grohl’s blog, Dave’s True Stories, is chock full of anecdotes, many of which bow before the giants on whose shoulders he stands today. “Like most red-blooded rock musicians, David Bowie provided an indelible addition to the soundtrack of my life from an early age,” Grohl wrote in one of his posts.
Continuing, the Foo Fighter remembered becoming infatuated with Bowie’s 1974 live album, David Live, and one song in particular. “‘Suffragette City’ was quite a hit at the backyard parties I played with my nerdy high school band in the early ’80s.” From behind his drum kit, Grohl handled the ‘Hey Man!’ background vocals “with the best pre-pubescent shriek” he could squeeze out of his “skinny little neck”.
It seems that Bowie soundtracked several core memories throughout Grohl’s young life. The Starman’s breakthrough hit of 1969, ‘Space Oddity’, soundtracked one of his first experiences with beer. “I can still vividly remember the time I vomited Kung Pao chicken all over my sister’s VW bug after drinking too much cheap beer at a high school party while the sweet sounds of ‘Space Oddity’ crooned in the background,” he recalled.
Although Grohl was and still is a proponent of grunge and similar heavy rock genres, one of his favourite albums hails from Bowie’s confessed “Phil Collins years” in the 1980s. “The album that really stole my heart – and I know that I’ll be drawn and quartered by hardcore Bowie fans for admitting this – was his 1983 masterpiece Let’s Dance.”
If anyone is lucky enough to have seen Grohl attending a concert, they will know that he likes to lose himself to the music. He may not be Fred Astaire, but those hips start to shake whenever Bowie’s synth-era masterpiece hits the turntable. “As much as I want to pretend to be in love with his deeper, darker Krautrock/Berlin phase, I really just want to do the Molly Ringwald dance to ‘Modern Love’ every day for, like, 8 hours a day,” Grohl admitted.
Let’s Dance followed Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) as another step into pop consciousness following his experimental Berlin Trilogy. Bright and accessible, the album housed danceable classics including ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire)’, ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘China Girl’, which boosted it to the top of the charts in the UK. Sadly, Bowie couldn’t maintain this flashy allure through the remainder of the ’80s.
Listen to David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ below.
