“Their songs were dead simple”: The band that pushed Dave Grohl to play the drums
When it comes to being a musician, the drummer’s throne is almost a calling more than a passion. Although it might not look like the most glamorous position in the world, the greatest technicians behind the kit have felt unchained the minute that they start laying down the backbeat and creating a groove that hardly anyone else can touch. Despite Dave Grohl finding his call at the front of the stage in Foo Fighters, his first taste of what drums could sound like came from listening to this new wave band.
Then again, it would be hard to look at any of Grohl’s biggest influences and not bring up Led Zeppelin. Outside of being one of his all-time favourite acts, his work in Nirvana feels like the most natural extension of what John Bonham did, either laying down something understated and then ramping it up to the point where he sounded like a feral animal playing tunes like ‘Territorial Pissings’.
Outside of hard rock, though, Grohl never claimed to be a snob about music. It wasn’t out of the question for him to steal from anyone from Led Zeppelin to the Gap Band when putting together the right groove, and when he was coming up in the middle of hardcore punk, genres like new wave weren’t that far behind either.
Throughout Grohl’s teenage years, acts like Blondie and The Vapors were starting to rear their heads and play something that was a bit or nervy than what had come before. Talking Heads may have been the darlings of that particular genre, but what made Grohl turn his head was seeing Devo perform when they first debuted.
While it would be hard to miss any of the band members with their matching boiler suits and headgear, the music itself was wildly interesting compared to every other new wave act. From the strange cadence in Mark Mothersbaugh’s voice to their weird covers of Rolling Stones songs, Q: Are We Not Men? We Are Devo was the perfect way of disassembling rock cliches to make them sound different all over again.
Despite the weirdness of the band, Grohl felt that he would be playing the drums a lot differently had he not heard them, saying, “Everyone in my year at school wanted to be in Devo, they were these aliens you really wanted to know, really wanted to be part of. Plus, they were from Ohio, which is where I’m from, and it was really inspirational not only to have a band take New York by storm from Ohio but also for them to be that far out, recreate themselves that much. Plus, their songs were dead simple to learn. They kinda made me start playing drums.”
Even if the songs were rudimentary, that’s the whole reason why Grohl’s methods worked so well. The best Nirvana songs were meant to be as simple as children’s songs, and listening back to some of Grohl’s drum breaks, he became one of the kings of the anti-drum fill, usually putting the basic time-keeping fill into the mix to give Kurt Cobain’s songs that little push they needed to appeal to people.
In fact, grunge may have been one of the few ways that the next generation managed to embrace new wave. After all, punk and new wave were about breaking down the stereotypes of prog rock, and since rock had been watered down by hair metal, Nirvana were the leaders of the next phase of deconstruction.
