When he was 11, Dave Grohl was convinced he was going to die.
This was in the early XNUMXs, when the terms Armageddon, nuclear winter and mutually assured destruction were as commonplace as quarantine or lockdown are today.
Growing up in the immediate vicinity of the Pentagon and the White House in Washington, Grohl concluded that "if there is a war, we will be the first people to die".
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"I used to dream of missiles in the sky and soldiers in my backyard," he says.
"I clearly remember a dream in which I'm standing in my yard and I see a soldier hidden behind a tree who, while I'm running to my room, shoots me in the back."
"So I always imagined that there would be a war and that way I would die at the age of 11 or 12."
Warning, spoiler ahead: he didn't die.
Instead, Grohl became the drummer for Nirvana, the leader of the Foo Fighters, a famous documentary filmmaker and, all in all, the most decent man in the world of rock and roll.
But all those boyish fears came flooding back in 2019, when his daughter Harper, on the way to school, asked him, "Dad, is there going to be a war?"
"I guess she saw something on TV about North Korea or Iran or something," he says.
"But it instantly brought me back to those dreams, and it was really shocking to even think about her having the same hopeless dream that I had when I was a child."
This made him write a poem - Waiting for War (Waiting On a War) - about finding light in the dark.
A day later, the song was recorded with the intention of appearing on Foo Fighters' tenth album.
"It's a very difficult time for any child because of the pandemic, the quarantine and all these lockdowns," Grohl says.
He believes that it is important to give people hope, not only for our children, but for the whole world.
"I've always considered myself a person who relies on hope - that's why I manage to push through each next day."
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MUSIC it's me saved his life
Perseverance and optimism are key elements to the story of the Foo Fighters lineup.
Grohl almost gave up music in 1994, after Kurt Cobain committed suicide.
Lost and overcome with pain, the musician "turned off all the amplifiers and packed up his instruments".
"The pain was so strong that it was simply impossible for me to pick up the instrument and play," he recalls.
But after six months of inertia that paralyzed him, he realized something else:
"Music has saved my whole life, and that's what I need most now."
He picked up the phone and made an appointment at the studio for a week.
Although he was not known as a songwriter - he was signed to only a handful of Nirvana songs - Grohl had been making music since his teenage days, recording instruments and vocals with two tape recorders in his home.
Later, in Seattle, he would beg for extra time in the studio from roommate and producer Beret Jones and record "experiments" on unused tapes of other bands.
"They were super quick sessions, never longer than half an hour, because I didn't want to put my friend in an uncomfortable situation," he recalls.
"I would run from the drums to the guitar, from the guitar to the bass, do some short vocal intervention, and then I would record it all on a tape and take it home. I would listen to it and say to myself, "Okay, let's move on."
He never dreamed that he would jump around the stage with a guitar and sing.
The very idea of returning to the stage still sounded like a curse when, in October 1994, Grohl booked a week at Robert Lang's studios in Washington.
Then he pulled out some songs that he had been secretly creating for the last 10 years.
In a fit of musical purification, playing all the instruments alone, he recorded 15 songs in the first four days.
On the fifth day, he recorded the vocals, on the sixth he did the mixing, and then he made a hundred recorded cassettes.
"I remember standing at the tape duplicating table choosing the font for the letters and for me that was the most interesting part of the job - just deciding what it was all going to look like!"
"I don't know who I gave all the tapes to. But I was aware of how comfortable I felt just holding them in my hands and knowing that I made them myself."
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Wanting to remain anonymous, he labeled the tapes "Foo Fighters Work Mixes"—believing the fictitious name wouldn't be associated with him—and carried them in the trunk of his truck.
Over the next few weeks, he gave them to anyone who would listen, from Nirvana fans who approached him on the street to strangers he met at gas stations.
It turns out that two copies played a key role.
The first found its way to Pete Smyr, who played guitar on Nirvana tours and who told Grohl that the music "blew him away".
He later joined him on stage when the fake band became real.
The second ended up with Eddie Vedder from the group Pearl Jam, who participated on two songs (exhausted i Gas Chamber) during the broadcast of the radio show in January 1995.
Soon, important faces from the world of the music industry started to hang around the demo recordings and thus a war broke out for his signature on the contract.
Grohl eventually signed a distribution deal with Capitol Records, giving his label, Roswell, complete control of the material and the bulk of the profits.
By July 1995, Grohl's demo and unadorned tapes were hitting the shelves of Tower Records and Virgin stores as the Foo Fighters' debut album.
They were soon sold in a circulation of over two million copies.
A full 25 years later, the Foo Fighters are one of the biggest bands on the planet - headliners at stadium-filling festivals, and were invited to perform at Joe Biden's inaugural concert a few weeks ago.
Songs such as these are partly responsible for that Times Like Trees iBest of You.
Heavy but melodic, commercial but not trendy and most powerful when you listen to them loud.
The volume knob on the device in Grohl's home studio is set to 18, a volume that eclipses even Spinal Tap standards.
But this success was also possible thanks to Grohl's diligence: Foo Fighters create, record and tour the way it was done in the 70s.
Not even a broken leg could stop them from performing in 2015, when Grohl performed his duties while sitting on a specially made throne.
And because of that, 2020 was a real torture for the 51-year-old.
The band was ready to release their tenth album, Medicine at midnight, at the beginning of the year and to solemnly promote it with a jubilee, 25th tour.
Then covid attacked "and everything stopped, there was only silence", says Grohl.
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Colorful lie
He went to Hawaii with his family, there he cooked and homeschooled his children, and at the same time he went "crazy" trying to figure out when concerts would be allowed again and when he would be able to release an album.
"After months of waiting and waiting and waiting, I finally realized that these songs were made to be listened to.
"Regardless of whether it's a stadium, a festival, your home alone or a car stuck in traffic."
Like many recent Foo Fighters records and Medicine at midnight was created as an album with predetermined creative frameworks.
Where it is Wasting light from 2011 was recorded live in a garage, a Sonic highways from 2014 represented the musical history of American recording studios, so it is Medicine at midnight -,,party album".
Based on rhythm, instead of riffs, this album was inspired by disco-rock experiments such as Bowie's Let's Dance, Another One Bites The Dust, Queen or Prinsov groups in 1999.
To the dismay of drummer Taylor Hawkins, some of the songs even use drum samples.
"That's right, Taylor resisted it," Grohl says with a laugh.
"And, of course, I deeply believe in the human contribution to music, but this time it was decided: Okay, let's twist everything a bit, to do something that might even surprise us."
"There are songs we recorded that didn't make the album because they sounded too much like Foo Fighters songs, to be completely honest. I really wanted to change that."
The result is most evident on the album's first single, Shame Shame, whose subtle, funky beat sounds unlike anything we've ever released before."
"I've always loved dance music, disco and R&B," says Grohl. "I'm a drummer, so there's a lot of rhythm-based records on my list of favorite albums - but I've never been in a band that played that kind of music."
“So, when I refer to Let's Dance David Bowie, it has a lot to do with the rhythm on that record.
“It's a machine that drives music and that's something we've never tried with Foo Fighters, so that was a top priority. That's where we started."
To be fair, fans probably won't be horrified by this new direction.
The very DNA of the Foo Fighters sound remains intact beneath all those drum and bass samples, and Grohl's melodic craft - arguably the group's secret weapon - remains top notch.
This is especially heard on Chasing Birds, a gentle and lovely ballad found in Paul McCartney's catalog.
"You know, dissonance and chaos are easy for me," Grohl says.
"During my formative years I listened to a lot of complicated music, so I finally realized that the challenge of simplicity and melody is much more fulfilling than feedback, screaming and distortion alone."
"I realized that when I was in Nirvana," he continues.
"Kurt's songwriting was very simple and ultimately his songs touched people's hearts because of their simplicity and melody. But yes, it is not easy to do".
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Family ties
During the recording of the album Medicine at midnight, Grohl wanted to concentrate on songwriting, so he abandoned his home studio and rented "a nice old house across the street from where I used to live" in Encino, California.
The result was a productive run that led to a full album being recorded there…which in turn led to the entire line-up inadvertently gaining another member - Grohl's 14-year-old daughter Violet.
"About two or three hours every day I would go to rest and pick her up from school," explains the singer.
"Sometimes she would come back to the house with me, sit on the couch and do homework."
"One day, producer Greg Kurstin said to her:
“Hey, Violet, would you like to be the backing vocalist? She stood in front of the microphone, tried it a couple of times - and that vocal in the chorus of the song Making A Fire, that high-pitched vocal, that's her voice."
"Everything seemed very natural, but not official, until my accountant called me a few months ago and asked where to send a check for her."
"I asked her: 'What are you talking about, and she said: "Well, she sang on the album and we have to pay her a fee for that." And I told her: 'Take that money and give it to me, and I'll open a bank account for her, so she can use it when she turns 18.'
It wasn't her first performance with her father - she even sang on Heart Shaped Box at a Nirvana tribute concert last year - so Grohl is full of enthusiasm when talking about her musical possibilities.
"Violet is an extremely talented musician," he says.
"He is able to pick up any instrument and learn to play it within a week. He has absolute hearing and sings from his belly. And she is aware that she sings the best in the entire Grohl family."
"My lifelong dream is to be a drummer in her band".
For now, though, Violet is keeping up with her schoolwork from home, and the Foo Fighters are starting a new campaign. Although it is a limited, covid type of action, full of TV appearances and virtual performances instead of real tours.
At Biden's inauguration last month, the band played a reflective version of the song Times Like These, a song chosen because it carries a message of healing and unity.
"This is a bit morbid, but whenever someone close to me died, I would realize that in life you have to try everything before you move on," Grohl explains.
"Just as you have to learn to live again, so you have to learn to love again."
"That song has optimistic lyrics and makes perfect sense because of everything our country has gone through."
As the child of a Republican speechwriter father and a liberal elementary school teacher mother, Grohl believes there is still hope for America's deep divisions.
"I've always been somewhere in the middle, and that's how I realized that it can all exist side by side," he says. "It's never easy. But there has to be some kind of cooperation and understanding that will prevent everything from falling apart - was like that when I was growing up".
So will he consider the idea of running for president himself?
"Absolutely not," Grohl says with a laugh.
"It's hard enough being the lead singer of the Foo Fighters, I can only imagine what it would be like if I was . . . the president."
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