‘Dance This Mess Around’: The ‘SNL’ performance that changed Dave Grohl’s life
In the 17th Century, when Archimedes worked out he could tell fake gold from real by seeing the distribution of water and working out its weight, he leapt out of the bath and screamed, “Eureka.” Since then, the eureka moment has been a pivotal part of many people’s lives, as something that didn’t make sense before is suddenly locked into place as clearly as ever. These moments are typical for musicians, and Dave Grohl’s occurred when watching Saturday Night Live.
Every musician needs a eureka moment, which is essentially when they realise that the best thing they can do with their lives is to make music. A song, album or performance acts as a homing beacon for them as they are suddenly drawn to the idea of creating sound for a living and cannot shake the thought of doing anything else.
When he was younger, Dave Grohl tuned in to the hit American comedy show Saturday Night Live. Though the whole premise of the program revolves around silly sketches designed to make people laugh, they always have a musical guest perform a couple of tracks throughout the program to break things up a bit.
One night, as a young Dave Grohl was settling in for an evening of jokes, he was utterly oblivious to the fact that his life was going to change forever. The B-52s took to the stage and started performing ‘Dance This Mess Around’, which left a lasting impression on the drummer and is a song he still cites today as one of his favourites.
“It was probably seeing the B-52’s on Saturday Night Live that changed my life forever,” he said in an interview, “I had never seen anything like that.” The track is upbeat and persistent, which welcomes screeching vocals over a minimalistic playing style. It is a song that sets itself apart from others thanks to its uniqueness in how it’s put together and executed.
It seems fitting that Grohl had a show with so much emphasis on the fact it’s live changed his life. In his career, Grohl has cemented himself as a musician who people have to go and watch in the flesh. Whether it was playing drums for Nirvana or being the frontman for Foo Fighters, he leaves everything on stage and refuses to come off until the job is done. He is so adamant about perfecting the live show that even when he broke his leg on stage, he stayed on while having a cast applied to finish the show.
When someone is that committed to playing music live, it is only natural that the early and crucial moments in developing a love for music will also have centred around live shows. For Grohl, it was the B-52’s, wedged right in between a fart joke and a weekly news round-up.
