“I feel so, so privileged”: Why Violet Grohl was always going to become a musician
In the nepotism conversation, the nuance that is often missed is the simplest logic: if you grow up around passionate people, in a household where creativity is all around and encouraged rather than shrugged off as a waste of time, how can you not end up passionate too? For Violet Grohl, that rings true.
It’s not just that she’s the daughter of Dave Grohl, but she’s the daughter, granddaughter, even great-granddaughter of a family obsessed with music. When talking to the kids of famous people who are now launching their own careers, it can sometimes feel like there’s an elephant in the room that they don’t want you to acknowledge.
Some will even have their publicists brief you in advance, banning their parents’ names, desperate to try and claim that all of this came from nowhere, but Grohl brings it up immediately.
“My dad has this sick, old Ford bus from the ’60s. It’s red. It’s awesome,” she tells Far Out, reminiscing on her LA home as we met in London, “No wait, it’s blue now, actually”. While others would do everything possible to not position their famous parent as the origin of their career, she refuses to do that as she says, “We always drive around and just play music and talk to each other about it. I play some stuff maybe he’s never heard before, he’ll play stuff I’ve never heard before.”
In fact, she can pinpoint her career origins back to one exact day, in that exact car, when she was just 13. “He was like, ‘Have you ever listened to Jeff Buckley?’ And I was like, ‘No, but I’ve had people tell me that I should’,” she recalled. Her dad looked at her and said, “I’m gonna play this for you, and it’s gonna change your life”, and it did.
It changed when ‘Grace’ started playing. “I have such a vivid memory of it. The instrumentation of the song fucking blew my mind when I heard it for the first time. We were driving down Ventura in the valley in LA. I was like, ‘What is this?’ It was the most beautiful song I’d ever heard in my life.” The smile on her face is the kind that appears when someone is talking about their passions, the one on my own is the kind you get when hearing that. I wished we could have listened to the song there and then.
And isn’t that just it? Passion shared is infectious.
There is something so apt in Grohl’s deep love for Buckley as she continues to gush, “He’s so special”. The moment when she first appeared on stage with her dad in 2018 as a nervous kid feels reminiscent of Buckley’s performance at his father’s memorial, both serving as events where talent was revealed to the world.
But specifically, this was talent being revealed to a weight of expectation and also a sense of inevitability. In those moments, it was obvious that both Buckley and Grohl would be musicians to note. However, it was also within those first songs that the reputations of their fathers landed right onto their futures. It was clear that forevermore, no talk of them would ever really come without at least a nod to their dads.
“I think there is a little bit of relatability in that sense, where it’s like, OK, you kind of went through this as well, and did it in a really, really admirable way,” she said, acknowledging that obviously, Buckley had it harder; the Grohls actually get on.
Yet Buckley’s life feels like a perfect example of the nuance missed in this debate. Like Grohl, Buckley grew up with music all around him and creativity encouraged, though not from his famous but absent father. It came from his mother instead. For Grohl, too, that encouragement comes from every direction, as she said, “My family is very musical, not [just] my dad. My dad’s mom was a choral singer. My dad’s dad was an orchestral flautist, my other grandparents listen to music all the time. It’s just something that’s very deeply embedded in my family.”
And obviously, the soundtrack of the Grohl households is great. Playing in the kitchen, Violet was raised with an incredible musical education that was vast and varied. Recognising her privilege in this entire situation and industry, she states, “I feel so, so privileged and lucky to have been opened up to that at such a young age, and being allowed to listen to whatever I want, and not like, ‘No, you can’t listen to that because that’s the devil’s music’ or ‘that has curse words in’ or whatever it might be.”
Overwhelmingly, Grohl grew up in a family that basked in music, so her dreaming of being part of it surely doesn’t come as a surprise, as she notes, “I think there’s an added kind of special essence when it’s something that has been done or been something that’s a part of your lineage. I think that there’s something really, really special about that.”
As we established before, passion shared is infectious. I think you’ll find that if you get to the root of any artistic project, that fact will be there.
In Grohl’s world, it was there right when she first decided to properly take the leap. While there might have always been a sense of inevitability after her first stage appearance that it wouldn’t be the last we’d see of her, Grohl herself really wasn’t sure when that would be. She was wiser, wary of starting too soon, though, but obviously, the opportunity was there, explaining, “I feel like if I did put something out sooner, or if I’d got into the studio sooner, I don’t think it would hold as much weight to it”.
She’s been putting it off and off, waiting for it to feel right, and it only did when she met Justin Raisen and the pair had one of those familiar, buzzing conversations, bonding about art. “We talked for like six hours, and it was amazing, listening to music on his speakers and talking these reference points that we love, and these bands that were super inspired by,” she said of the scene, reminiscent of the hours spent in her dad’s car.
In that moment, it felt like everything came together in a perfectly messy amalgamation. There was a middle ground of mutual influences as she brings up “Kim Deal, Pixies, Breeders, all of that stuff. PJ Harvey. There’s a band called The Presidents of the United States of America. They have this incredible album.” There were also the classics, but with Grohl’s youthful desire to shake it up, saying, “We’d listen to Link Ray’s ‘Rumble’, classic rock song, and be like, ‘How can we turn this into something maybe more modern, or, what about this do we like? Is it the sound? Is it the feel? Is it the lyricism?’”
It was just like those moments that first made her love music. She brought her stuff, Raisen would bring his. On the table there would be a mix of Kim Gordon, David Lynch, 1960s rock, 1990s shoegaze, childhood nostalgic scenes, teenage diary entries and so on. And passion shared is infectious. Passion shared is motivating, encouraging and exciting. Passion shared is also helpful and helps you get better. So, is it really any wonder that Violet Grohl is a musician?
