The rock icons Dave Grohl never understood: “I don’t get it”
Not every rock band is meant to have universal praise. For as many massive acts like The Beatles seem to only get stronger over the passage of time, there are acts like Creed that rake in millions of sales despite an equal amount of rock fans clowning on them for years. While Dave Grohl has grown into that weird middle ground where he’s practically untouchable—in a musical sense—he admitted that he was never that keen on listening to the Eagles.
Then again, Grohl was never into mellow rock and roll to begin with. When looking at his first releases with Scream, he was firmly entrenched in the world of hardcore punk, and there’s a good chance that anyone from Fugazi to Bad Brains would have given a swift middle finger to anyone who tried to get onstage with an acoustic guitar and play their own version of ‘Tequila Sunrise’.
Punk was about playing every note like it was the last one they would ever play, and the Eagles practically represented everything lackadaisical about music. But outside of the mellow stomachache they gave to ‘The Dude’ and probably millions more, there were many more interesting moments in their songs when you look for them.
Outside of the overplayed tracks like ‘Hotel California’ and ‘Take It Easy’, some of their ballads are the more gripping tales they have ever penned. They aren’t necessarily the most uptempo tunes in the world, but the 1970s would definitely be missing something if they didn’t spit out ‘Wasted Time’ or ‘My Man’ when they did.
And let’s not forget Joe Walsh. Compared to every other group he’s been in, the guitar troubadour will probably be known as the joking foil to Don Henley whenever he’s onstage, which practically anoints the Eagles with at least a few cool points by tearing through tracks like ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ or ‘Life’s Been Good’ live.
Despite their many classics, Grohl thought that they were far from his cup of tea, telling Guitar World, “For the record, I hate the Eagles [laughs]. No, I don’t hate them, but when I listen to The Eagles I think of three things: afros, cocaine, and ferns. I picture someone coming home after work and sitting down in a wicker chair on the porch with a glass of chardonnay. That California country rock thing is so brown to me. I don’t get it.”
While Grohl isn’t the kind of person who stays put like that for very long, he does at least know how to make that kind of mellow tune when he wants to. Throughout In Your Honor, tracks like ‘Another Round’ and ‘Cold Day in the Sun’ even have a bit of a country edge to them, especially with Taylor Hawkins singing lead on the latter, who was always a self-professed Joe Walsh fan.
So, as much as Grohl might try to outrun any influence that Glenn Frey and Henley had on Foo Fighters, the Eagles have become so omnipresent that they seem to transcend normal influence. Most people can try their hardest to make their own original music, but if you manage to put harmonies together in just the right way or add a modicum of twang to your voice, you’re going to sound like the Eagles whether you like it or not.
