He’s got the classic LSD: lead singer’s disorder,” Dave Grohl is on talkative form, telling me about the character he plays in Studio 666, the new horror film he’s made alongside his band Foo Fighters. “That whole, ‘I don’t need these guys. I can do this all by myself,’ attitude. I have never felt that way for one second in this band. They’re my guys, and I surely would never kill them and eat them.”
Studio 666 sees the six-piece (playing themselves) enter an LA mansion to record their 10th album — much like they did when they set out to make last year’s Medicine at Midnight. Unfortunately for the fictitious Foos, their chief songwriter (Grohl) is bedevilled by writer’s block — something that only a Faustian pact with a long lost (mysteriously murdered) Nineties band can fix. A screwball horror-comedy ensues.
The 53-year-old Los Angeles-based rock star — currently frontman of Foo Fighters but previously one third of grunge pioneers Nirvana — is already operating at full-volume enthusiasm despite us speaking at the very un-rock’n’roll hour of 9.30am on a Sunday morning.
Grohl and I were meant to be talking in Soho. But even a band whose top four songs on Spotify have collectively been streamed almost two billion times are no match for Storm Eunice. “What the f*** is going on over there? We have a hurricane season, so we actually know when they’re coming,” he laughs. “This is the first time I’ve ever sat in my living room next to a suitcase for two days waiting for your weather to calm down.”
It’s a shame, Grohl in person is known to be amazing fun to interview. On my screen, his freshly shampooed locks are flying as his tattooed forearms gesticulate. It’s quite the performance, almost as riveting over Zoom as it is from the stages of the world’s biggest venues (the band’s next shows here are two sold-out nights this summer at the London Stadium). “We play on a lot of Spinal Tap clichés,” he says of Studio 666. “Not only are we poking fun at the [horror] genre with as much blood, as many f***ing chainsaws, as gory a death scene as we can come up with. We’re also poking fun at being in a rock band.”
It’s an interesting premise, although, rock bands in 2022 are not what they used to be. Studio 666 has fun with rock’n’roll tropes, but the musical genre itself seems imperilled partly because of social media. When Grohl started making music, rock stars were known for throwing TVs out of hotel windows. Now artists are aware that everything they do can be recorded, disseminated to millions and judged. Does he think that musicians have become more sanitised? “It’s a good question,” he muses. “There is a new sensitivity to the messages in the music that a lot of people are putting out into the world… Rock’n’roll has a history of being offensive. I think you have to be true to the person that you are, and it’s inevitable that anything you say could go against someone else’s feelings. “It’s definitely a different world now. And I do think that people have to take that into consideration and be responsible, for sure.”
Grohl’s probably one of the few people who can give a truly bird’s-eye view of rock: he’s won 12 Grammy Awards with Foo Fighters and sold over 30 million albums. Not the outcome many would have predicted for the drummer in Nirvana, a man whose personal and professional life was capsized by the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain.
That loss is one of the challenges endured by Grohl in over three decades in the musical spotlight (many of them recounted in his 2021 autobiography The Storyteller). As we witness Kanye West seemingly struggle in the public eye, I wonder: how has Grohl processed stadium-filling fame with not just his sanity intact but also with the life-affirming bonhomie he’s become so well known for? “It’s tricky, man,” he acknowledges. “I’ve tried my best in the last 31 years to navigate that. And it’s not easy. So whenever I see someone having a difficult time in a very public life, it makes me concerned. When Nirvana became popular, we were kids, 22, 23 years old. So we didn’t necessarily have the emotional skillset to make our way through that without a scratch. And ultimately, we didn’t make it. So I pray and root for anyone that seems to be going through something like that.”
Grohl thinks there can be a lack of compassion for musicians, especially when fans feel deeply connected to the art they’re making. “I think people need to understand that as much as these faces that you see, that are married to the sound that you listen to, they’re actual people. They’re human beings. And there has to be some sort of compassion or understanding that their lives should be their lives. That it’s not all yours. There are pieces of it that are shared. But when it comes to being surrounded by everyone at all times, you have to remind yourself to preserve you for you,” he says.
Whenever I see someone having a difficult time in a very public life, it makes me concerned
“Everything does not belong to everyone,” he continues thoughtfully. “That’s important. You have to know when to say ‘no’. And you have to reserve that power to say: ‘You know what, f***ing leave me alone. Let me go figure this out.’ And if you’re going through a difficult period, hopefully you’re surrounded by the people that love you, that can help you through. Because not everyone will.”
One thing Grohl has on his side is a solid family life. He and Jordyn, his wife of 19 years, have three daughters: Violet, 15, Harper, 12 and Ophelia, seven. Violet, certainly, has dad’s genes. Her rendition of Amy Winehouse’s Take the Box, performed with Grohl late last year and available on YouTube, reveals that boy, the girl can sing.
The old man, though, won’t be encouraging Violet into the music biz, very much loath to become “some overreaching stage dad that pushes her into the industry. I try to be as hands-off as possible”. That said, “after we recorded that song — and that was one take, live in the studio, which is not easy to do, especially to make it sound like that — we got in the car, and I said: ‘We need to have a talk. It’s time. It’s time for you to start writing your own music.’
“And then I said: ‘And you need to get a f***ing job’,” he laughs. “Nothing’s gonna make you want to be a musician more than having a job that you don’t like. So, one step at a time.”
Meanwhile, dad will keep on flying rock’s freak flag. Foo Fighters will finally be back on the road this summer, playing the world’s biggest venues in support of that 10th record. It’s an intense lifestyle and certainly there have been physical tolls for Grohl: tinnitus in both ears; a permanently bent finger; a scar on the back of his scalp; “and I have a new ankle because I fell off the stage once. Oh, and I’ve been jet-lagged more than half of my life”. He shrugs, adding: “I’ve gotten to the point where I know that sleep is necessary — but not for me, motherf***er. I’m used to it and I wouldn’t wish it away. There is not one job that I would rather have, that’s for sure.”
Rock is his life — and true to its anti-establishment spirit, he’s broadly supportive of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell’s choices to leave Spotify in the outcry over Joe Rogan, the podcaster accused of spreading anti-vax misinformation on the platform. “I think every artist should reserve the right to stand their ground, whatever it is, and make their point and protest whenever they feel is in their heart. Every artist should reserve the right to say what they want to say.”
Studio 666 is in cinemas from tomorrow
