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Home , Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters, Kurt Cobain, Queens of the Stone Age, Sonic Highways, Them Crooked Vultures

Handout 2 - ’s Growth Mindset

To some, Dave Grohl is the from the groundbreaking “” band Nirvana. Other music fans likely know him as the guitarist, vocalist, frontman, and songwriter of the arena- filling band, . Still others that have seen Grohl on the HBO series or the documentary Sound City may recognize him as a music historian and film director. The truth is that Dave Grohl is all of the above.

Thinking back to his childhood during an episode of the Sonic Highways series, Grohl remembers his artistic “light bulb” turning on during a family vacation to . Grohl, only twelve at the time, accompanied a cousin to a local Punk concert. It was awesome. He left the show inspired, asking himself, “why can’t I do this?” Then, he realized he could.

Once home in Springfield, VA, a Beltway suburb about thirteen miles from the White House, the young Grohl tapped into D.C.’s thriving Punk scene. He befriended members of the local music community such as Ian MacKaye, a go-getter who played bass in Teen Idles, sang in Minor Threat, and later handled guitar and vocals in , all while co-founding the label.

In the mid and late 1980s, the major record labels, radio, and MTV--basically all the national tastemakers--were mostly focused on Glam Rock, Synth Pop, and . D.C. Punk wasn’t even on their radar. But, rather than get discouraged or bitter about the lack of outside investment, many in the D.C. scene embraced a “do-it-yourself” (DIY) ethos, supporting each other by creating and buying local music, and printing and trading homespun Punk “fanzines.” They saw a jungle and hacked their own paths.

The spirit of possibility was not lost on the young Dave Grohl, who remembers feeling from the slightly older musicians around him that, “the message wasn’t that ‘we are rock stars and we are better than you … [it was] ‘we are people and we are all in this together’.”

Yet when the world met Dave Grohl a few years later, it was not as a messenger of D.C. Punk music. Rather, Grohl emerged as the drummer in Nirvana, a band that is, to many, the defining act of the Seattle “Grunge” scene. In January 1991, propelled by both college radio and MTV, Nirvana’s single “” spent 20 weeks on the Billboard charts. Though their tenure was short-- frontman died in early 1994--Nirvana’s effect on popular music was profound and lasting.

Dave Grohl had just turned 25. He had just spent three years as a member of one of the most popular bands in the world. It’s reasonable to assert that, for the most part, his dreams had come true. So what did he do when Nirvana ended? He looked forward.

Grohl considered drumming with other bands. His short post-Nirvana stints in both and The Heartbreakers and could have likely become full time jobs. But Grohl was already growing during his Nirvana years, working on his guitar playing and writing songs, and even earning songwriting credits on the band’s final . Grohl decided he was up for a new challenge.

In July of 1995 Grohl released Foo Fighters, an album on which he played every instrument, and launched a band by the same name in which he plays guitar and sings. Nine studio and an armful of major awards later, Foo Fighters continues to rock. Grohl continues to drum as well, recording with , , and others. He’s even held multiple spots simultaneously on the Billboard Top Ten with multiple bands in which he plays different instruments. He was inducted into and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Nirvana in 2014.

One might argue that playing everything at once, as Grohl does here on Play, is the logical next step. What, one may also wonder, will come next?