The one singer Dave Grohl never wanted to work with again: “That’s not cool”
There aren’t too many artists that Dave Grohl hasn’t managed to check off of his musical bucket list.
Nirvana were already one of the few bands that anyone would have killed to have seen back in the day, but ever since they fell apart, Grohl has been the kind of musician who could find some time to jam with literally anyone in the world, whether that’s former Beatles, Prince, or even some of his friends in Queens of the Stone Age. He would work with anyone and everyone, but there were a few times when he felt like some of his collaborations didn’t work out like they were supposed to.
Granted, that was already a problem when he first got the idea of working with Foo Fighters. The whole band was supposed to be Grohl’s baby from the minute that he made that cassette on his own back in 1995, but when you look at their origins, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Band members were dropping like flies back in the day, and even when everything seemed to be on stable ground, it’s not like the band were happy making every single song that ended up on albums like One By One.
Once Grohl had his bearings, though, there was a lot more out there for him to explore. Any other musician would be shellshocked getting to work with the former members of Led Zeppelin, but when looking at him jamming with Jimmy Page and John Bonham during their show at Wembley Stadium made them look like they were a bunch of kids coming together to play some of their favourite tunes.
Grohl wasn’t too shabby in the session scene, either, but whereas Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails were all friends of his, it was going to be a little bit tricky trying to work with someone who wasn’t even around anymore. The Beatles already had their own troubles working on The Beatles Anthology, but the thought of Grohl adding drums to some of Michael Jackson’s old tunes was too good for him to pass up.
There was already a bunch of questions surrounding ‘The King of Pop’s posthumous work, but when looking at the kind of job that Grohl was trying to lay down on Michael, he seemed to at least have an idea of what he wanted to do. After all, he grew up listening and emulating Cameo and The GAP Band, so it wasn’t like he couldn’t lay down that groove, but after getting the call from Lenny Kravitz to work on the song, Grohl remembered getting treated pretty badly during the session.
They weren’t too harsh on him by any stretch, but when Grohl heard the finished track for ‘I Can’t Make it Another Day’, he was pissed when he found out he wasn’t even on the final recording, saying, “That was messed up actually Lenny Kravitz – who I met once – called and asked if I want to play drums on a track. I said “sure” play drums on it and never hear from them again. On the sleevenotes it says ‘Michael Jackson featuring Lenny Kravitz and Dave Grohl’ but they didn’t use any of my recordings. Dude, that’s not cool!”
That said, it’s not like the rest of the record is terrible without Grohl by any stretch. Jackson was a stickler for perfection, and a lot of the songs that turn up on his posthumous work are proof of the high bar that he set for himself. ‘Hollywood Tonight’ wasn’t up to his standards, but it could have been absolutely perfect on any other artist’s record.
But if Grohl was going to be involved in anything else that the Jackson camp was doing, he was going to need more than just the name recognition. He wanted to bring that human element into music, and he was not going to stand for someone else coming in and pretending to be him for the length of a song.
