Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl
David Eric "Dave" Grohl is an American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer. He is best known as the former drummer for the grunge band Nirvana and the founder and frontman of the rock band Foo Fighters, of which he is the lead singer, one of three guitarists, and primary songwriter...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth14 January 1969
CityWarren, OH
CountryUnited States of America
Someone 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.
I'm not like a voracious hoarder who has 50,000 albums of vinyl stacked in a storage space in the San Fernando Valley. But I do have albums from the last 40 years of my life.
I think maybe what happened was the convenience of technology overshadowed the experience of holding an album in your hands, and sitting on your bedroom floor, and staring at a picture of John Lennon or Gene Simmons or Johnny Rotten. That tangible experience can sometimes become an even more emotional experience, because it's really happening.
There's nothing better than having a bottle of beer in your hand in the waves.
With this record [The Colour and the Shape], I started taking the lyrics more seriously. This is a very personal album.
I hate the solo artist aspect of rock-'n'-roll. I don't have enough personality or charisma to be a solo star.
We're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing.
There's nothing I'd rather do than make music. It's the love of my life.
My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12.
The 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.
It's funny, there aren't too many musicians that also moonlight as studio engineers. There's a few - the really brilliant ones.
To me the most important thing is getting into a studio and making an album that is 12 or 14 amazing songs, getting up onstage, and making people happy by livening the rock.
A place like Sound City, which was just a big, beautiful room where you would hit record and capture the sound of the performer - a place like that isn't necessarily in demand anymore.
Different boards do different things to the sound that's coming through them. An old Neve desk does embellish it in a way that makes it sound sort of bigger or warmer. It doesn't change the performance but it does enhance the way that it sounds.