If Dave Grohl has learned one thing in his career as a professional touring musician, he tells us in his overly upbeat autobiography, is that nothing good ever comes from being asked the question: “Which one of you is the drummer?”
The inquiry, he writes, is followed, “more often than not… by either handcuffs, a subpoena, or a swift punch in the teeth”. In one particular instance in June 1990, parked outside a small venue in Toronto, waiting for a record company showcase gig by Iggy Pop to finish so that he and his fellow band members in Scream can load in their equipment and play their gig, Grohl decides to answer in the affirmative. He is then asked another question: “Wanna play drums with Iggy Pop?”
In what seems like a charmed life, Grohl was at the right place at the right time. Some might say luck was always in his favour, but everyone knows that if you don’t take those incremental steps to put yourself into a position where you get noticed then nothing will happen. Where he was blessed was that his part-Irish mother, Virginia (“a very tolerant woman”), knew him well enough to allow him, at 17, to drop out of high school. Under her experienced teacher maxim of “school isn’t for everybody” (and with his award-winning journalist and staunch Republican Party father’s parting words of “stay off the drugs!” ringing in his ears), Grohl joined punk band, Scream, in 1987. From there on in, he took life by the ears and steered it in an onwards and upwards direction.
Grohl needed to get away to a place that he connected with 'in a way I had with no other part of the world' and where else would that be except the Ring of Kerry
The way he tells his story – from holding drum sticks backwards and thwacking pillows at his modest home in Springfield, Virginia, to becoming one of the wealthiest drummers in the world, third after Phil Collins and Ringo Starr – is very much as you might expect from a musician who is regarded as being one of the nicest in the business. In other words, not one specific person is insulted, there are no diatribes, no screaming matches. The closest it gets to a negative is he “didn’t find the Pacific Northwest very appealing at first… but then again, this was a corner of the country that I knew absolutely nothing about… yet”. Cue another question that changed Grohl’s life forever: “Have you heard of Nirvana?”
By October 1990, Grohl and Kurt Cobain were sharing a one-bedroom apartment (“it made the Chelsea Hotel look like a Four Seasons”) and their band, Nirvana “was being courted by every major-label record company known to man”. By September 1991, with the release of their second album, Nevermind, which was preceded by Smells Like Teen Spirit, the song that changed everything for them, Nirvana’s subsequent worldwide success splintered the band. Of this relatively short period of his life (less than four years), and in tandem with the book’s overall tone, Grohl writes without recourse to drama. In essence, he recalls, the acceptance of such success became an ethical issue. “We were now attracting the same people who used to kick our asses in high school for being different.”
Following the death of Cobain, a period of intense reflection began. Grohl writes that, at the age of 25, he was too young to disappear but too old to start again. He needed to get away to a place that he connected with “in a way I had with no other part of the world” and where else would that be except the Ring of Kerry. It was here that he experienced “the moment that changed everything”.
Driving past a hitchhiker wearing a Kurt Cobain T-shirt, Grohl realised he 'could never escape the past' and so consequently embraced his future
Driving past a hitchhiker wearing a Kurt Cobain T-shirt, Grohl realised he “could never escape the past” and so consequently embraced his future by returning to work, collaborating with the likes of Tom Petty, and founding Foo Fighters. It was through these outlets, he writes, that the “awkward dysfunction of Nirvana” was replaced by a sense of “family and community”.
Suitably sustained, he scrolls through the Foo Fighter years, hanging out with rock music royalty, performing at the White House for two US presidents (George W Bush, Barack Obama) and finding domestic contentment with marriage (his second) to Jordyn Blum in 2003 and their three children.
Rather than get lost in what he describes as “complicated introspection” (which might explain zero references to Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love, and his first marriage in 1994 to Jennifer Leigh Youngblood), Grohl instead stops trying to understand fate and destiny, and bend, sincerely, to the whys and wherefores of “divine mystery”. It’s all quite veiled and anodyne, but if you’re a fan just strap yourself in for smooth, well-told tales by a man for whom “dumb luck seems to be my specialty”.
