The hitchhiker who saved Dave Grohl and helped form Foo Fighters: “I realised I can’t outrun this”
It’s hard to imagine a music world without Dave Grohl in it. He’s the on-call uncle of rock and roll, ready to responsibly pick you up from your friend’s birthday party, in his people carrier with a glove compartment brimming with classic rock tapes and memorabilia.
I would ordinarily find Grohl’s relentless ability to smile impressive, even without the trauma. But when you consider what events his musical career has paralleled, you can’t help but respect the man’s continued pursuit of optimistic art in the face of adversities.
In 2022, the man who sat behind the Foo Fighters’ frontman and relentlessly drove their songs into the realms of stadium rock, Taylor Hawkins, tragically died. Despite the band’s established status in music and consequently infrequent recording sessions, this was still a profoundly impactful moment for Grohl, who was, once again, confronted with the sudden death of a bandmate.
Because when Kurt Cobain died in 1994, it brought the end days to Nirvana, leaving Grohl not only the very human grief to deal with but also a career crossroads to navigate soon after. It’s almost hard to imagine now, given how prolific he is, but the death of Cobain almost brought his entire music career to an end.
Grappling with the uncertainty of whether music was a priority for him anymore, Grohl took a trip to Ireland. While driving through the country’s winding roads, he stumbled upon a hitchhiker who, to Grohl, represented a sort of divine intervention for his existential questioning.
Grohl recalled: “I was driving around in my rental car on a country road, and I saw this hitchhiker kid, and I thought, well maybe I’ll pick him up. And as I got closer to him, I saw that he had a Kurt Cobain T-shirt on. It was Kurt’s face looking back at me, in the middle of nowhere, and I realised I can’t outrun this. So I need to go home and fucking get back to work.”
It was that same year that he returned to Seattle and formed the Foo Fighters, taking up the lead vocalist role and recruiting to make what would become one of the world’s most treasured bands. While Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic was offered an opportunity to rejoin Grohl in the studio, he elected not to, given the weight of his emotions during that traumatic period. But Pat Smear, who had played rhythm guitar as an unofficial member, joined him in his new endeavour.
But crucially for Grohl to step forward from the shackles of his musical and emotional past, it was his seizing of the microphone as the lead vocalist that helped bring a renewed sense of musical optimism. It was undoubtedly a seismic transition for a musician who had previously lived in the relative safety of a drum kit. Both physically and performatively, the instrument gave him a safe environment to exercise his wild power. But through his growing songwriting ability and safety in the knowledge that behind him were influential musicians in their own right, he swiftly became one of the leading frontmen in the world, and I guess we have a hitchhiker to thank for that.
