(Credits: Far Out / Dave Grohl)
There is always a certain hierarchy when it comes to fans of musical artists. Everyone can be grateful to have people that say that they like their work, but there are also bands like The Beatles where the fandom can quickly turn into an obsession where people start looking over every single piece of their recorded history, to the point where they know what everyone had for breakfast the day they made ‘Yesterday’. And while Dave Grohl embraced life as a rock star, he never let go of that side of being a fan.
He has always been as excited as anyone to be able to work with some of the greatest artists of his generation. The magic isn’t lost on him whenever he plays with Paul McCartney, but he’s also as excited to work with people like Bob Mould on a track or turn in some time going back and forth with someone like Ian MacKaye during the series for the album Sonic Highways.
When looking at Grohl’s record collection, though, he is absolutely sincere about every single artist that he’s willing to work with. Most people like to say that whatever new artist that’s out in the wild is their favourite to build clout, but Grohl is more than happy to be genuine about when he thinks someone is great, whether that’s listening to Billie Eilish in his spare time or finding himself onstage with boygenius.
And as far as genre is concerned, nothing is really off the table for him. This is someone who was listening to The Gap Band right alongside bands like Rush and Slayer, so it’s not like it was rock and roll or nothing for him. He knew there was power in every genre, and even if it made his record collection give someone tonal whiplash, it’s half the reason why people were listening to him when ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ hit the airwaves.
If there was any band that he held in the highest regard, it would have had to have been Led Zeppelin. The Beatles had started everything for his brand of rock and roll, but in terms of bringing a sense of swagger to the genre, no one could have done better than what Jimmy Page and Robert Plant did at the front of the stage. But Grohl is a drummer first, and everyone who has even thought about playing the drums will be kissing the ground that John Bonham walked on.
Ever since he was a kid, Grohl loved Zeppelin, but he knew that the true power was listening to what John Paul Jones was doing beside Bonzo, saying, “I know every riff that John has recorded on album, solo projects and otherwise. When we got into the music, I thought, This will be easy. What, I’ll be John Paul Jones’ favourite drummer ever? No, I’ll just relax and jam.”
And when looking through Jonesy’s back catalogue, that sense of jamming is precisely what he’s looking for half the time. He is a brilliant arranger and can lay down some of the greatest melodic lines in whatever band he’s in, but there’s a certain sense of aggression that comes out when he has the right drummer behind him, and when working with Grohl on Them Crooked Vultures, it was like that fiery monster behind the four-string never left.
But that’s not to say Grohl is coming anywhere close to matching what Bonham did. There’s no way to replace a drumming god, and while Bonzo deserves his place up in rock and roll heaven right now, it’s easy to have faint glimpses of what used to be when listening to Them Crooked Vultures play.
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