The unlikely guitarist Dave Grohl said “helped shape the sound of the Foo Fighters from day one”
Alongside his role as frontman of Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl maintains a healthy presence in collaborative performances, podcasts, and biographies. In all endeavours, the star outs himself as an unashamed rock fanatic. With a down-to-earth personality, he can often detach himself from his own stature to bow at the feet of his heroes.
Like many of his fellow rockers, Grohl is not classically trained, nor did he take formal lessons in drumming or guitar. Instead, he learned through his many, many idols. During his early teens, this meant drumming along to Ringo Starr’s beats on his parents’ old Beatles records until his fingers bled. Later, he encountered a greater challenge after discovering John Bonham’s work with Led Zeppelin.
Like Bonham, Grohl is associated with a hard rock style of explosive power. With Nirvana, Grohl helped to bring the unrefined, quaking genre of grunge to the global masses. This sound was inspired particularly by the punk movement and its offspring subgenres like noise rock, post-punk and the proto-grunge sound reminiscent of Neil Young’s ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’.
Despite his firm grounding in the heavier side of rock ‘n’ roll, Grohl feels no shame in admitting his deep adoration for pop acts like ABBA and Prince. In fact, the latter provided Grohl with the proudest moment of his career in 2007 when he covered Foo Fighters’ ‘Best of You’ at the Super Bowl. “All of those years spent in my bedroom practising alone to Beatles records, sleeping in cold, infested squats on winter fan tours across Europe, battering my drums until my hands literally bled… it all paid off in this moment,” he wrote in Dave’s True Stories.
Another unlikely influence on Grohl, and his work with Foo Fighters specifically, is the Mexican-American singer-songwriter Trini Lopez. In his famous cover of Pete Seeger’s ‘If I Had a Hammer’ and his hits ‘Lemon Tree’ and ‘I’m Comin’ Home Cindy’, he brought a Latin approach to the American folk tradition. This is heard most prominently in his frenetic strumming style and dynamic vocal performances.
As far as Grohl and many other Lopez fans are concerned, the late artist’s most significant offering was his nuanced approach to the guitar. When the artist passed away in 2020 following complications related to Covid-19, Grohl led tributes from the rock world, stating, “Today the world sadly lost yet another legend, Trini Lopez.” Grohl recognised Lopez’s “beautiful musical legacy” as a singer-songwriter before revealing that he “unknowingly helped shape the sound of the Foo Fighters from day one.”
Those familiar with the Foo Fighters catalogue may find this link tenuous, to say the least. However, Lopez was heavily involved in the guitar world and even designed two guitars in collaboration with Gibson. “Every album we have ever made, from the first to the latest, was recorded with my red 1967 Trini Lopez signature guitar,” Grohl continued. “It is the sound of our band and my most prized possession from the day I bought it in 1992.”
Grohl’s red Trini Lopez guitar is undoubtedly an iconic presence of the Foo Fighters’s onstage visage. This is just one example of how Lopez’s influence has bled far beyond the folk scene with which he’s most commonly associated.
