And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I'd go back to Virginia.
Dave GrohlI was at a New Year's Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, 'I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,' and I actually meant it.
Dave GrohlThe thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.
Dave GrohlUsually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.
Dave GrohlPeople should never be afraid that Foo Fighters are ever going to break up, it's like your grandparents getting divorced - it's not gonna happen.
Dave GrohlNeil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That's what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don't. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He's a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.
Dave GrohlWhen you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.
Dave GrohlJoining a band without ever having really met the people before, you just want to be musically powerful.
Dave GrohlWhen you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
Dave GrohlI'm big on taking the lady out to dinner. We have some candlelight romance every now and then. And our whole family is within a 6-mile radius. It's disgustingly domestic. I'm big on Costco.
Dave GrohlThe fact that I'm virtually deaf. Any woman who's going to date a rock musician has to be prepared to repeat herself every 10 seconds. My wife asks me where we should go for dinner and it sounds like the schoolteacher from Charlie Brown.
Dave GrohlMy mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn't have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.
Dave GrohlBecause you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.
Dave GrohlI don't think of Kurt as 'Kurt Cobain from Nirvana'. I think of him as 'Kurt'. It's something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.
Dave GrohlIf you're trying to connect to people with music - it's more of an outward process and a lot of times musicians can be very inward.
Dave GrohlDon't look at the poster on your wall and think 'I could never do that.' Look at the poster on your wall and think 'I'm gonna do that!'
Dave GrohlIt's good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that's better than you'd imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.
Dave GrohlTo women, drummers seem like these adorable, sexy Neanderthals, but lead singers seem mysterious and dangerous. So while the lead singers all want to be David Bowie, floating into parties and being the center of attention, it's the drummers who are in the corner doing keg stands and breaking tables. Usually it's the drummers who get the fun-loving ladies and the singers who get the nutcases.
Dave GrohlYou will only be great at things you love to do don't pursue a career in something you hate to do.
Dave GrohlI think the producers or whoever's doing the show are tripping so hard. They must be on acid. They live in this, like, weird grass mound and there's this 'sun' in the sky with this little baby's face that's just, like, bleaaargh-aarghagh. It's just so totally insane. It's such an acid thing, man. For kids!
Dave GrohlIf you play a Nickleback song backwards you'll hear messages from the devil. Even worse, if you play it forwards you'll hear Nickleback.
Dave GrohlI can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it'd take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn't want to retreat.
Dave GrohlAt 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.
Dave GrohlThere's a band in a garage right now writing songs for an album that will do the same thing 'Nevermind' did some 20 years ago. We don't know who and where, but it will f***ing happen again. All it takes is for that storm to break.
Dave GrohlThere weren't a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn't have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.
Dave GrohlA lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.
Dave GrohlSomeone curating songs for you through your computer or being able to hold 10,000 songs on your watch - that convenience is pretty incredible, but so is the emotional impact of holding a Beatles record in your hand and listening to Let It Be.
Dave GrohlI'm happy that I have my family, and I'm happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing's changed, really.
Dave GrohlThe late '60s and the '70s, a lot of this really beautiful equipment was being made and installed into studios around the world and the Neve boards were considered like the Cadillacs of recording consoles. They're these really big, behemoth-looking recording desks; they kind of look like they're from the Enterprise in Star Trek or something like that. They're like a grayish color, sort of like an old Army tank with lots of knobs, and to any studio geek or gear enthusiast it's like the coolest toy in the world.
Dave GrohlI guess it was exciting that every time I pulled up to the gate of my house, I wondered if someone was going to jump out of the bush and stab me in the face.
Dave GrohlI owe everything to Nirvana. But I can't let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn't even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.
Dave GrohlWhenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there's old luggage, a couple of bikes. It's big enough to put one minivan in. That's it. No dartboard. I'm so not macho.
Dave GrohlYou know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap - and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and 'Heart Shaped Box' and stuff on 'In Utero' just happened that way.
Dave GrohlWe only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters.
Dave GrohlHow come drummers leave their drumsticks on the dashboard of their car? So they can park in the handicapped spaces.
Dave Grohl