(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 21 December 2025 13:48, UK
Music is an area of the arts industry that repays loyalty. Most artists will enjoy time as part of only a handful of bands professionally. When it comes to matching resumes, you can’t get any better than Dave Grohl.
The Foo Fighters frontman would have been an underground punk legend had his classic hardcore outfit Scream not broken up in the late 1980s. But that was just the start for Grohl, given that his next step was with grunge pioneers Nirvana, with whom Grohl became a world-famous musician. It was a significant moment in time that would launch his career into the stratosphere and cement his place as an icon of rock music.
After the tragic demise of Nirvana, Grohl was initially staring down life as a journeyman session musician. He accepted a temporary position in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, sticking around just long enough to play with the band during their 1994 appearance on Saturday Night Live. It was a short gig but it spoke of how neatly Grohl could assimilate himself into any band.
From there, he continued to jam with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and joined an all-star lineup to recreate The Beatles’ early music style for the 1994 film Backbeat, which included Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, Mike Mills of REM, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum. It was proof once more that Grohl was a dab hand of finding the feel and sticking in the groove.
In the immediate aftermath of Nirvana’s demise, Grohl continued to record demos in his spare time. He eventually got a call from legendary Minutemen bassist Mike Watt to perform on his 1995 album Ball-Hog or Tugboat, which featured everyone from Eddie Vedder to Kathleen Hanna to Flea to Henry Rollins. Still, that wasn’t the band that Grohl described as the best.
Instead, it took another decade and a friendship with stoner rock icon Josh Homme for Grohl to finally join one of his favourite groups: Queens of the Stone Age. One of the most effective rock groups of all time, what the band may lack in melody, they deliver in heart-racing performance and unstoppable presence. Homme and Grohl worked as bookends to the band, with Homme snarling at the mic and Grohl propelling the band into the air.
“The Queens Of The Stone Age gig, when it was Nick [Oliveri], Josh and I, we were badass man,” Grohl told Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson on a 2005 episode of his radio show Masters of Rock. “That’s the best band I’ve ever been in in my life. It was great but at the same time Foo Fighters is like a family, the three guys in the band are like my brothers and that’s a feeling I don’t get with anybody else.”
“There’s a lot of people I’d love to play with. It’s just fun to jam with people. I was playing drums with Tenacious D in the studio the other day, that was great, it’s always fun to play with them,” Grohl shared. “I have my fantasy bands, I’m just waiting for Metallica to call. [laughs] I love being a drummer, cos to me I’m a drummer who’s pretending to be a singer-songwriter. That’s honestly the way I feel.”
“I love doing what I do and I love Foo Fighters and standing at the front of the stage at Reading festival and making 60,000 people sing along – it’s awesome,” Grohl added. “I love drumming more than anything else and when I sit down at a drumkit I know that it was the thing I was put on this planet to do and I plan on doing it for the rest of my life.”
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