“He pushes me”: the artist Dave Grohl said made him a better musician
Throughout rock history, there haven’t been too many life achievements that Dave Grohl hasn’t unlocked yet. Most people can only hope to be in one legendary band throughout their tenure, but considering how much Grohl has managed to do with Foo Fighters in the wake of Nirvana is still the work of a genius. While someone who has worked with the likes of Paul McCartney doesn’t really need to be intimidated by anyone, he feels that he always needs to step up his game when working with one of his musical peers.
Then again, that intimidation can go the other way as well. Despite wanting Foo Fighters to be a band effort, Grohl’s insistence that William Goldsmith play everything exactly the same way that he envisioned it is still the most daunting task anyone would ever have. Here we have the 1990s equivalent of John Bonham, and suddenly, he’s asking his young protege to play the song as well as he did for the record.
But that’s because Grohl already has a sketch of what a song should be before it’s even properly recorded. The whole point behind the first Foo Fighters record was him playing every single thing, so it wasn’t out of the question to have some say whenever the bassline moves or whether or not everything hits on the same beat when the band comes crashing in on the song ‘Everlong’.
While Grohl was still into making earth-shaking rock and roll whenever he played, Josh Homme was a different beast when working out the format for Queens of the Stone Age. The whole premise behind the band was to have no rules, and by the time Grohl signed on to work with them on Songs for the Deaf, they had created the blueprint for what modern stoner rock could sound like, complete with riffs as thick as Tony Iommi’s.
But that didn’t mean that everything was a walk in the park, either. Grohl may have been on drums, but instead of providing the typical backbeat that most drummers have to do, Homme put him through his paces, either by playing the perfect drum fills on ‘No One Knows’ or switching up the time signature of the song like throwing ‘Hanging Tree’ into 5/4 time for most of its duration.
Although Grohl did admit to being thrown for a loop at points, he still felt that Homme was able to get the best out of him every time, saying, “He’s just as intimidating musically as he is physically. We’ve been friends for a really long time, and I feel like we’re related to each other, not only personally but musically. We don’t even talk. If he puts on a guitar and I sit behind a drum set, that thing happens. But he pushes me and helps push me into a place sometimes where I get really fucking angry and frustrated, which doesn’t really happen often. He loves to get me into that place.”
It’s not hard to see that improvement in action, either. When looking at the few times that Grohl has returned to work with Homme, hearing him bash away in Them Crooked Vultures proved to everyone why he should still be considered in a similar league with Bonzo as one of the most powerful drummers to ever pick up two sticks.
But it was never about showmanship with Grohl. It was about serving the song, and with Homme, he could teach a masterclass on how to make something that sounds powerful that’s still easy to listen to.
