The 1993 album Dave Grohl listened to way too much: “So witty and weird”
Throughout his career, Dave Grohl has shown that he has a more eclectic taste than most famous rock musicians.
Part of what has always separated Grohl from many of his peers is his enthusiasm as a fan first and a rock star second. Whether he is championing underground punk bands or celebrating chart-friendly pop music, his appreciation for artists rarely feels performative or restricted by genre boundaries.
A fan of everything from metal to disco, it makes sense that the American has tried his hand at many projects that have toyed with dissimilar sonics.
That musical curiosity is a huge reason Grohl has remained such a relevant figure across multiple generations of rock music. Rather than becoming trapped in nostalgia, he has consistently kept one eye fixed on the future and the next exciting sound.
One way Grohl has kept himself relevant outside of the Foo Fighters’ constant chart success is by championing new acts. The Isle of Wight’s Wet Leg are the most recent to find themselves supported by the alternative rock icon. They are so adored by the former Nirvana drummer that he even joined them onstage at Coachella 2023 to deliver a rendition of the long scream heard in the climax of their track ‘Ur Mum’.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and since he was a teenager, Grohl has had his finger on the pulse of the latest musical developments. Famously, after being galvanised by an array of classic rock acts such as The Beatles, Rush and Kiss when he was a child, he would find solace in the flourishing hardcore punk scene, which would not only see him develop as a person, but offer him a route to the lofty status he has today.
He dropped out of school to join the influential hardcore band Scream and tour the world. A steep learning curve for the green drummer, this period saw him mature significantly, and through his friends in sludge innovators Melvins, would see him join Nirvana and help change the course of popular music forever. Of course, the grunge trio would end in immense tragedy when frontman Kurt Cobain took his own life in April 1994, but this wouldn’t stop Grohl.
Even amid Nirvana’s explosive success, Grohl never lost the mentality of someone obsessively consuming music from every possible angle. That openness to different influences would later become one of the defining qualities of Foo Fighters.
After languishing in the personal and creative doldrums, he emerged with the first Foo Fighters demo, and he would begin to assert himself as a widely consequential figure outside of Nirvana.
Before this great schism, Grohl continually showed his excellent music taste alongside his Nirvana bandmates, and since their end, has done so as the leader of Foo Fighters, mentioning many acts from up and down the musical pyramid as favourites.
One man he is a particularly big fan of is Pixies frontman Frank Black and his solo work. The stories of Black and Nirvana are inextricable due to Cobain allegedly stealing his quiet-loud-quiet dynamics. Still, outside of this friction, Grohl is acutely aware of Black’s immense talent.
When listing his favourite albums for Melody Maker in 2000, Grohl named Black’s self-titled 1993 debut among them. Fully praising it, he admitted that it is so infectious that he listened to it “far too much”. A paradox in that it is a stylistically eclectic but cogent pop record, it’s easy to see how where the Foo Fighters formula takes some of its cues from.
Grohl explained: “I listened to this far too much. I thought for a moment that he would be this huge pop star and finally get his due. There are some great songs on this, but his music is just quirky enough that it will never translate to a huge audience. A long time had passed since ‘Surfer Rosa’ and this was probably his most cohesive pop album yet. There’s Bowie in there, all sorts of influences and sometimes it was more raw and fucked-up than ever. As a lyricist, he was truly great. So witty and weird.”
Listen to Frank Black below.
