The album Dave Grohl called “depressing” to make
For Dave Grohl, music serves as a form of therapy. Despite the joyous nature associated with rock and roll, the process of creating music can sometimes be daunting. Grohl, known for his roles in Nirvana and Foo Fighters, approaches music with a sense of enjoyment, viewing it as a means of expression. However, he recalls a challenging and somewhat sombre experience while recording the first Foo Fighters album, reflecting on the weight of Kurt Cobain’s passing.
After playing drums in the hardcore band Scream, Grohl’s time in Nirvana would turn them into a pop culture mainstay. Although Cobain was the one who wrote the lyrics, Grohl was the one who gave them a heartbeat, grabbing the listener by the lapels the minute that the opening groove of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ started.
While Grohl was proud to become the soft-spoken drummer in the band, Cobain was not able to handle the pressure that came with being a frontman. After trying to break away from the band’s radio-rock sound on In Utero, the accompanying tour would become disastrous due to cancelled gigs and Cobain overdosing while in Rome.
Despite everyone feeling like things would be fine, Cobain was slowly entering a downward spiral. While everyone tried to get him into rehab, Cobain would leave after a few days and be found dead in his home a week later, having killed himself with a shotgun in April of 1994.
Outside of the band ending, Cobain’s death was the alternative equivalent of ‘The Day The Music Died’, with fans all over the world grieving for an artist they thought they knew personally. As for the band members who actually knew him personally, Grohl was convinced that he would never play music again.
Moving away from all of the reminders back home, Grohl went to the countryside in Europe, only to be reminded again when someone on the road was hitchhiking with a shirt with Cobain’s face on it. There would be no escape from the shadow of Nirvana, but that didn’t mean that Grohl had to stop playing music forever.
To get out of his funk, Grohl returned home and started making various demos of songs that he had worked on while still in Nirvana. Even though he didn’t have any intention of forming a band, he knew that he wanted to express himself however he could, even if that meant leaving a number on his soul.
When discussing the album’s development, Grohl thought that the entire project was a more emotional experience than anything he had done, telling Apple Music, “It serves this like an exorcism where it feels good because you’re purging a lot of these feelings, but then it’s also a bummer. Every time I pick up a pen or a guitar and I’d start writing something, it was just depressing”.
Once he hit upon songs that worked, like ‘This Is A Call’ and ‘Alone + Easy Target’, he knew that there was something that he wanted to expand on. Slowly warming up to the idea of forming a band, Grohl eventually put together musicians behind him that would make up the modern incarnation of Foo Fighters, with Pat Smear and Nate Mendel still working with the band to this day. Even though Grohl has weathered more emotional strife than any musician should have to face, he learned a long time ago that music is made to help people heal.
