“I couldn’t even get close”: the musician Dave Grohl could never figure out
For most rock stars, music shouldn’t be anything too complicated. Sometimes, there are riffs that aren’t quite as easy to get down on paper, but the lion’s share of any great song is about strumming chords and saying what’s in your heart rather than trying to make some grand artistic statement. Although Dave Grohl knew how to search within himself to birth his greatest songs, he thought what some artists were doing in the 2000s was beyond all logical comprehension.
Then again, Grohl never claimed to be a musical prodigy in any sense of the word. Even in Nirvana, he said there was no chance he would share any of his songs with the band because he was convinced that they would never measure up to what Kurt Cobain was writing for them.
It was bound to be difficult for anyone to compete with Cobain, but Grohl did have a few aces up his sleeve. Going back to those early Foo Fighters records, ‘Big Me’ was a good example of taking a simple chord progression and making the perfect pop song, and even ballads like ‘Walking After You’ had a few tricky moments that would trip up the standard guitar student who wanted to play chords.
Around the time Grohl reassembled Foo Fighters, he was looking to make something a bit more ambitious. Now that he had some softer material, In Your Honour became a tale of two albums, with the one disc being arena rock-style ragers and then turning it down to make the kind of adult contemporary music the Eagles would be proud to have in their catalogue. No one gets there alone, though, and Grohl brought on Norah Jones to help flesh out a few tunes.
Since she had been one of the biggest names in music ever since Come Away With Me absolutely dominated the charts, Jones was more than able to hold her own in Foo Fighters. While the volume may have been toned down, Grohl remembered being almost intimidated by what Jones could do when she entered the studio.
When talking about the guests on the record, Grohl thought that Jones was on a different level compared to anyone he worked with, saying, “I got to work with Norah Jones this year. She’s an accomplished musician; I dare say more so than most of the shredder guitar players that listen to ‘real metal’ all day long. Musically, I swear to God, her mind works in ways I couldn’t even get close to understanding.”
And that kind of genius is on full display on her track, ‘Virginia Moon’. There had already been certain chords that Grohl would throw into the occasional Foo Fighters track, but this is enough to be a one-off jazz tune in their catalogue, complete with the kind of chords that wouldn’t have felt out of place on a Joe Pass record.
Even though Grohl was never going to stray from his rock roots, Jones is a good reminder that not every heavy genre has accomplished players. No matter how many people want to shout about their greatness for as long as they can, it’s sometimes the hardest thing in the world, making it all look easy.
