(Credits: Far Out / Raphael Pour-Hashemi)
Sat 11 October 2025 18:45, UK
Anyone looking to check off all the boxes for becoming a rock and roll legend can practically follow everything that Dave Grohl has done for the past 30 years.
As much as people like to paint him as a caricature of what a rock star is supposed to be, no one’s ever going to find a more down-to-earth person who is completely content to have won the musical lottery and made millions of fans bounce in stadiums around the world. But even for all of the heroic moments he has had throughout his career, a lot of his power comes from how little of his music is complicated.
Then again, don’t discount being complicated for being laid-back. When he formed Foo Fighters, he had a firm idea of what he wanted the group to be, and even if not everything managed to work in the same way on every record, he knew enough to realise when someone like William Goldsmith wasn’t the right person for the job when he began working on tracks like ‘Everlong’ and ‘My Hero’.
Grohl had a firm idea of what he wanted his songs to sound like every single time he went into the studio, but that wasn’t going to be entertained at all once he decided to step up to the plate in Nirvana. Kurt Cobain was calling all the shots, and he was more than happy to go with the flow and make the kind of music that Cobain heard in his head whenever he played along to his tunes.
But when listening to a lot of Nevermind, Grohl’s parts could easily be counted as songwriting credits if he wanted to. They were far from the most complicated parts in the world, but listening to him tear through every second of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ sounds like him kicking down the door of the next generation and making way for Generation X to take over.
Their signature tune might be etched in stone for a reason, but many of the drum hero moments on the record come from Grohl playing pretty standard fills. He kept everything as sparse as he could when things died down, and when listening to the drum hooks he would throw into every tune, he almost sounds like what John Bonham would have sounded like had he been crossed with the simplicity of Ringo Starr.
And that approach was almost an unspoken rule whenever it came to the drums on the record, with Grohl recalling, “I think the one thing I am most proud of is the raw simplicity of Nevermind. Our intention was to do something so straightforward that it was almost childlike; simple rhythms and simple patterns. It’s bare bones, simple drumming and I think the fact that it is so stripped down and so easy to nod your head to is why people still listen to it. My goal in Nirvana was to make air drummers out of a generation of people that had no idea how to play the drums.”
Grohl is probably right on the money thinking that a bunch of would-be drummers played along to every fill of a track like ‘In Bloom’, but the central approach still applies on the next record as well. In Utero was a much bleaker record than before, but Grohl was still willing to get the most direct drum sound that he could go for, to the point where every hit on ‘Heart Shaped Box’ felt like a smack in the mouth.
While many seasoned pros would want to be known for something more than a couple of bare bones drum fills, the true artists have always known the importance of when to shut the hell up. The music needs to breathe for everything to sound right, and with only a few fills, Grohl had the entire world eating out of Cobain’s hands.
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