The story of how Dave Grohl discovered punk rock
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Watch Pearl Jam perform The MC5 song ‘Kick Out The Jams’ with Dave Grohl
The world would be a very different place without Pearl Jam and Dave Grohl, and the impact that both have had on modern culture cannot be understated. From the musical to the aesthetic, they are rightly hailed as one of the finest ever to do it, and their careers have been the stuff of legend, complete with many highs and lows.
The story of Pearl Jam is a well-known one. Born out of the ashes of Seattle legends Green River and Mother Love Bone, they quickly rose to become one the hottest bands in the Pacific Northwest, with guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard shredding like the heroes of old, with the spirit of fellow Seattleite Jimi Hendrix coursing through all of their blues-infused yet high-octane riffs.
Added to this is the pounding rhythm section of Jeff Ament and Dave Krusen was one of the most dynamic in existence, providing the guitarists with the ballast they needed to provide such an all-encompassing sound. Completing the setup was frontman Eddie Vedder, who is one of the most captivating band leaders of all time, possessing a primal wail that is not dissimilar from the likes of Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant.
As for Dave Grohl, his life is so legendary that you’d be hard-pressed to find any music fan that isn’t readily familiar with the trajectory of his career. He started as the teenage prodigy who drummed in the D.C. hardcore heroes Scream before the connections he made saw him become the drummer for Seattle’s most important grunge outfit, Nirvana.
His introduction to the fold changed the DNA of the band, with him proving to be what they’d always been looking for, and before too long, Nirvana had released 1991’s Nevermind, a record that changed the face of not only music but popular culture itself. After the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in 1994, Grohl took some time away from the industry before returning with the first Foo Fighters album in tow in 1995. Bby the end of the decade, he wasn’t just one of the best drummers in the world, but one of the finest songwriters.
Given that both Pearl Jam and Dave Grohl are so important to music – and that they are so closely linked through their importance to the grunge scene – there’s no real surprise that they are friends, as they also share the strange position of being some of the very last survivors of the grunge scene.
This friendship has been a very fruitful one, and one of the highlights came back in 2010 when Grohl joined Pearl Jam onstage in Werchter, Belgium, to perform one of the tracks that inspired them to become musicians, The MC5 song ‘Kick Out The Jams’. A proto-punk masterpiece from 1969, it infused music with an energy unlike anything anyone had ever heard before, despite the ascendance of Jimi Hendrix. Political, thought-provoking, and electrifying, even today it sends chills down the spine. This was the fury of the counterculture captured in a musical form.
The cover is a stellar one that stays true to the original, with Dave Grohl catching the eye as he bashes the tambourine harder than ever thought possible and Vedder channelling his inner Rob Tyner. This shows just how indebted Pearl Jam are to The MC5, with the tight grooves of the track clearly inspiring some of their best songs such as ‘Even Flow’ and ‘Alive’.
