David Grohl: The Power of Foo

Dave Grohl is best known for being a rock icon and now he has decided to put down the microphone and pick up a camera. His documentary,” Sound City,” will premiere at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York on February 13. The film originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year. The film chronicles the history of the Sound City Studio in Van Nuys, CA. This studio is particularly special because prior to its 2011 closing, it still used a soundboard and analog recording equipment, something that is unheard of in the auto-tune age. To Grohl, the shift to making music while using computers instead of recording live instrumentals has negatively affected the quality of present-day music. He believes people make the music, not the machines.

“When you get four different people, four different personalities, four different players in a room – that combination equals magic,” Grohl said to the Salt Lake Tribune. “You can get the Beatles and you can get the Rolling Stones and you can get AC/DC. That happens because of people’s imperfections and bad habits. That’s what gives music personality, and that’s what I think is exciting about music.”

That soundboard is a huge factor in the success of Grohl’s rock career. He is best known to this generation as the front man of the Foo Fighters but he was introduced to the world as drummer for famed grunge rock band Nirvana. In Grohl’s opinion, there might not have been a Nirvana if it wasn’t for that soundboard and that studio.

“You might have never heard of Nirvana if we had recorded in Hollywood with a fancy producer who made us sound like Def Leppard,” he said. “The fact that that the (sound) board made us sound like us is what people appreciated. To be reunited with it, honestly, it was like meeting your real parents for the first time.”

Prior to finding stardom, Grohl was just a poor kid from Virginia. His father abandoned him, his mother and his sister when he was six-years-old but despite this, he was a relatively happy kid. “I never needed much,” Grohl said to The Guardian. “I never thought I’d get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.”

He started getting into music when he was 13 and joined a band that played at nursing homes. He eventually dropped out of high school to pursue music. He got a stroke of luck after becoming Nirvana’s drummer in 1990. The band shot to superstardom in the early nineties thanks to the band’s hit album “Nevermind” , which sold 4 million albums, and the single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The band went on to release one more album before lead singer Kurt Cobain committed suicide in April 1994. Grohl founded the Foo Fighters later that year. After a few lineup changes, the band was able to settle down and make some magic. The group has several platinum albums and has won 11 Grammy awards. In addition, the group has sold over 10 million albums.

That wasn’t Grohl’s first brush with tragedy Taylor Hawkins, drummer for the Foo Fighters, almost died of a heroin overdose in 2001, something that frightened Grohl. Afterall, drugs are common in the rock world and Cobain had been a heavy drug user prior to his death. “When Taylor wound up in hospital I was ready to quit music. Because, to me, it felt like music equalled death. I started praying. I’ve never been to church in my life, and I’m walking back from Taylor’s hospital to our hotel every night, praying out loud in the streets of London,” he admitted. “I don’t even know if I believe in God. But I felt like, y’know, this is just not right, y’know, what kind of God would let this…”