“You can’t lose”: the band Dave Grohl thought everyone should love
No band can have the right song for every occasion. There’s a good chance that Black Sabbath would be perfect to listen to when driving down a highway or when hanging out with fellow metalheads, but when it comes to dinner with grandma, it’s best to keep Tony Iommi’s riffs off the stereo. Nothing is going to fit for every occasion, but Dave Grohl felt that there was hardly any way to strike out when certain bands were firing on all cylinders.
Whenever Grohl listens to his inspirations, though, he always looks for a tune before anything else. Anyone can have their 15 minutes of fame trying to strut their stuff for the length of a music video, but it doesn’t matter to him if it doesn’t have something substantial to listen to, if no visuals are needed.
That’s probably why he ended up gravitating more towards bands like Rush and Led Zeppelin than he did towards a band like Kiss. Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley have certainly earned their stripes as two of the most seasoned writers in rock and roll, but Grohl was far happier going through a Zeppelin record and trying to match everything that John Bonham could do behind the drum kit.
However, as Grohl entered the late 1990s with Foo Fighters, that analogue approach to music was no longer the only option. There had been the beginnings of industrial music dating all the way back to the late 1980s, and when people like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry were taking over the hard rock scene, it was only a matter of time before an actual electronic superstar broke through to the mainstream.
“What’s cool about the Prodigy is that they’re a rock band and their kinda a punk band in a way but they’re a dance thing but they also sound heavy metal at times so you can’t lose.”
Dave Grohl
Despite Grohl’s aversion to artificial instruments, there was always something interesting in the way that The Prodigy mixed their tunes. They were an electronic act in every sense of the word, but their approach was far more indebted to rock and roll than anything else, especially when listening to how forceful a song like ‘Firestarter’ could be when they played massive festivals.
Although Grohl’s taste was far more interested in roaring guitars and pummelling drums, even he admitted that he had been won over after listening to what they could do, saying, “I’ve always been really impressed with at first their rhythms, but I think this guy Liam is just great, amazing. He knows how to build songs, he knows how to make rock songs with a computer and that’s what’s cool about the Prodigy is that they’re a rock band and their kinda a punk band in a way but they’re a dance thing but they also sound heavy metal at times so you can’t lose.”
While the band did use the visual medium to their advantage, like frontman Keith Flint hamming it up in the ‘Firestarter’ video, it was hardly needed. A band like Kiss would have fallen apart on a handful of songs if they didn’t have the visual, but Liam Howlett had the uncanny ability of putting someone in that dark headspace without ever having to show any kind of video or artwork behind the scenes.
Grohl’s love for The Prodigy might seem out of character for people who know him as one of the greatest spokesmen for rock, but that wasn’t how he saw things. He only knew the importance of good music, and even if someone was using a sampler instead of a guitar, it only took 30 seconds of a song for him to know that they’re on the same page.
