“I can’t think of another”: the only band Dave Grohl wanted to play drums for
Dave Grohl has never been known to be very picky when it comes to the people that he’s worked with. One look at his discography will tell you that he’s more than willing to work with anyone as long as he likes the material, whether that’s turning up on a St Vincent record, laying down a solid groove for Nine Inch Nails, or turning up onstage during a Boygenius gig for laughs. While Grohl is more comfortable now in front of the stage in Foo Fighters, he felt that he has never felt more comfortable playing drums for this band since Nirvana ended.
If anyone had to go through what Grohl had to back in the mid-1990s, though, the thought of even picking up two sticks must have been nauseating. Kurt Cobain may have been a dynamic songwriter throughout Nirvana’s career, but since there were no songs to string everything together, it was hard for Grohl to even think about playing music for a while.
Once he got himself out of his funk, the initial plan would have been for him to sit in with Tom Petty when he was having trouble with his own drummer, Stan Lynch. The heartland rock gig might have been fun for one show, but Grohl knew that he would be much happier making something a bit heavier and following his muse with Foo Fighters. Once the band started going through a few shake-ups, though, Grohl knew he needed another outlet than screaming at the top of his lungs every night.
As it turned out, though, he didn’t need to look for long. He had already been shouting the praises of Kyuss ever since his days in Nirvana, and when Josh Homme struck out on his own with Queens of the Stone Age, it was a no-brainer for him to join when asked if he would play drums on the album Songs for the Deaf.
Even though half of the tracks on the record are indebted to Homme’s signature stoner-rock taste, Grohl is the real star of the show behind the drumkit. Homme may have written the songs, but hearing the epic drum fills in the middle of ‘No One Knows’ or playing in strange time signatures in ‘Hanging Tree’ was miles different than anything Foo Fighters would have been putting out around that time.
While Grohl’s involvement with Queens of the Stone Age did give him some issues once he got back to working with Foo Fighters, he still knew that Homme was one of the only people that he consistently wanted to be behind the kit for, saying, “I’ve known Josh since 1991. To this day, I can’t think of another band I would rather play drums for.”
And it’s not like Grohl didn’t find ways to shake things up when he returned to his old band. On the very next record, he worked in different time signatures on tracks like ‘Times Like These’, and even when working on their back-to-basics album Wasting Light, hearing the venom in his voice on ‘White Limo’ is in the same vein as Nick Oliveri’s freakout moments on ‘Six Shooter’ or the beginning of ‘You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire’.
Compared to all the other bands he has drummed for, Grohl always felt most at home behind the kit for Queens of the Stone Age. There tended to be some nervous energy going into every Nirvana performance, but this was Grohl’s excuse to break out the John Bonham chops he had kept under wraps for years.
