“It’s all disco”: How Dave Grohl created the most iconic drum beat of the 1990s
Every so often, a guitar riff comes around and redefines a new era of rock and roll.
After The Beatles had defined what popular music sounded like in the 1960s, a string of new bands in the ‘70s snatched the rock throne to try and become the next musical monarchy. Many contributed to this diverse new era of music, but it was Led Zeppelin who became the true gods of rock, with Jimmy Page laying down riffs like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ that redefined the era.
Then came the ‘80s, which got a little fragmented from a rock and roll perspective. The UK underwent something of an indie resurgence, while the US got caught up in the smog of hairspray and descended into a decade of hair-metal, led by the frazzling riffs of Van Halen.
The ‘90s then became something of a clean slate, where music fans were craving a fresh interpretation of rock and roll. Enter Nirvana, whose riff defined this shift with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. While Kurt Cobain has since admitted that it was, in fact, the band trying to write a pop song, it’s hard to view it with the sort of satire a comment like that warrants.
It arguably showcases the band at their very best, perfectly storming the instrumentation of these three icons in one sugar rush of a song. Cobain’s cutting vocals inspire the chaos, while Krist Novoselic keeps him anchored to the structure of the song. But beneath Cobain and Novoselic was Dave Grohl, who laid down one of the most iconic drum beats in rock history.
His staggering intro sounded like an engine, roaring into fury, only for it to click in the first verse and send the song off into appropriately powerful realms. So when producer Butch Vig sat at the foot of the engineering desk, tasked with bringing this song to life, he couldn’t believe how lucky he had gotten.
“They played ‘Teen Spirit’, and it just crushed me how good [Grohl] was, and how good they sounded,” Vig told Howard Stern in 2022. Giddy with excitement, Vig remembered, “I started pacing around the room – usually I take notes, but I was just taking it all in. They finished the song, and Kurt was like, ‘What do you think, Butch?’… I went, ‘Play it again.’”
It’s unsurprising, really, given how natural the song feels in the style of the band. Nothing felt laboured over, and the primal energy of the band felt as though it oozed from the recording.
But ever the deflector of his own talents, Grohl has since removed himself from any praise and brazenly stated that he was ripping off an iconic disco band on the album and that track in particular. He explained, “If you listen to Nevermind, the Nirvana record,” Grohl began. “I pulled so much of that stuff from The Gap band, Cameo and Tony Thompson on every one of those records. It’s all disco; that’s all it is.”
It’s funny that just 15 years earlier, rock fans were burning disco records in a fiery blaze, claiming it wasn’t real music, only for their future rock prodigy to come and lay down one of the most beloved rock drum parts, with the genre as an inspiration.
