The greatest album of Dave Grohl’s career: “This is heavy”
You’re not going to find anyone more natural in the rock and roll world than Dave Grohl.
As much as he has been known as one of the greatest musicians of the past few decades, Grohl has always seemed like the kind of person who is just as happy being onstage and holding court with the crowd as everyone who paid for a ticket every single night. He might be one of the most genuine people in the limelight today, but that’s only because he never stopped being a fan once the houselights went up at his first arena shows.
After all, Nirvana never wanted to be the biggest band in the world when they started. Kurt Cobain clearly had big dreams for where he wanted to go, but when they got their first royalty checks, Grohl was focusing on being sensible rather than putting all of his money up his nose. And the same thing applied to when he started putting together the first demos of what would become Foo Fighters’ debut.
He knew that he wanted to have a band behind him, but working the club circuit might make him feel right at home again. He needed some time before he was ready to start bouncing his way across the stage again, but even when working with everyone from Mike Watt to Eddie Vedder, he was still starstruck standing in the same room with the punk rock legends.
But Grohl’s taste ran far deeper than a bunch of punk rock tunes. That was where he grew up, and his heart will always be connected to the DC hardcore scene, but he also wanted to make songs that could get people moving. That might have been through listening to the GAP Band when thinking about those opening drum fills on ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, but around the time that grunge started to seep into the mainstream, the metal world was already trying their hand at making pure groove music.
Metal may have become a lot tighter thanks to thrash bands like Metallica, but the originators like Black Sabbath were no strangers to heavy rhythms. They could swing like no one else back in the day, and Max Cavalera felt that the next best thing was to take all of the attitude and heaviness of modern metal and blend it with more eccentric rhythms when Sepultura released Roots. This was the template for what metal would become, and as soon as Grohl heard it, he was forever changed.
He wanted to get drums that were as close to that style as he could, but he knew that nothing could groove as well as Sepultura could, saying, “That record became the gauge for every studio album Foo Fighters did for ten years. ‘That sounds pretty good, but see how it stands up to that Sepultura record…’ There’s no way we ever got anywhere close. But it gave you perspective – this is heavy. What you’re doing? It’s okay, but this is heavy.”
At the same time, Foo Fighters weren’t always built for that kind of song anyway. There are a few tunes in their catalogue that get a lot heavier like ‘Stacked Actors’ and ‘Watershed’, but it’s not like anyone was listening to a song like ‘Learn to Fly’ or ‘My Hero’ and expecting them to drop in one of the heaviest riffs known to man in the middle of everything. They were a lot more punchy, but Grohl did at least get his wish when working with Cavalara later down the line.
The Probot record was the one time where they could truly dominate the field, but the metal side of Grohl was always the secret weapon that most fairweather fans forget about. Foo Fighters might have made some of the catchiest pop rock that the world has ever heard for 30 years, and meanwhile they have that side of themselves that could kick anyone’s ass if they aren’t careful.
