The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

Grohl grew up in North Springfield, Virginia near Washington DC in a small house with his mother and brother. He recalls his childhood as being “true seventies Americana shit” (24), with typical days spent fishing, spray painting, or skipping school. Grohl had friends and fit in as well as he could have, but he always felt different and like he did not quite belong. He describes himself as shy and awkward around girls at the age of 13, but when he saw Sandi, he was immediately struck by her beauty. Grohl describes Sandi as the first girl to break his heart. After he worked up the courage to ask her out, the two of them dated for a week before she ended it.

He later had a dream in which he was a famous rockstar playing in front of a sold-out arena. In the dream, Sandi stood in the crowd, crying, reaching for him, and clearly feeling regret. The dream inspired Grohl to pursue music seriously and as a career. He notes that he appreciates every heartbreak he experienced over his life, as each one fueled his music and his passion. Thirty years later, in 2011, Grohl played his first sold-out DC show with the Foo Fighters. Sandi came to the show and Grohl found himself reliving his dream. The only difference was that this time, Sandi was not filled with regret; instead she held up her middle finger and mouthed the words, “Fuck you, asshole!” (31). Grohl finds humor in the situation and admits that his guitar is his true love.

Grohl draws on anecdotes from his childhood to demonstrate his perseverance and ability to handle physical pain, setting the stage for his story of the day he played a concert in Sweden with a broken leg. He recalls that his suburban childhood was filled with various injuries. In one such incident, his friend accidentally hit him in the head with a golf club, and he walked home bleeding onto his favorite Superman shirt. Another time, he broke his ankle playing soccer. Grohl jokes that the staff at the local hospital came to know him well and that he relished the chance to miss school because of an injury. Grohl remembers only dreading emotional damage, never physical damage, and putting a brave face on after every injury to make things easier on his mom.

Grohl recalls the pain he felt when his oldest daughter, Violet, had to get her first shots. He notes that in that moment, he understood how his mother felt as he was growing up. Grohl’s memories shift from childhood to a concert in Sweden in 2015, describing the experience of playing to a stadium of fans as exactly as exciting as you expect it to be. The band started with their one of their biggest hits, “Everlong”, and played what Grohl describes as their “most unforgettable show” (43). As the band moved into “Monkey Wrench”, Grohl crossed the stage and tripped over a cable. He fell forward onto the floor below the stage, breaking his leg. Grohl was taken off stage and discovered that his ankle was also dislocated. Grohl insisted that someone get a brace for him while he went back on stage to continue playing the show. He had the doctor come on stage and hold his ankle in place while he played. A few songs later, a cast was brought out and placed on Grohl, and he played out the rest of the show. Grohl describes the moment as “sheer joy. It was triumph. It was survival” (46). Grohl feels that this was a defining day for the Foo Fighters, and that it solidified them as a band that represents “healing and survival” (47).

Grohl’s mother made a life-long friend in Sherry, whose daughter Tracey became like a cousin to Grohl. Every summer, his family drove to visit Tracey’s family, and one year, they arrived to find that Tracey had become a punk rocker. Her clothing was different, and her attitude seemed to have evolved. She took Grohl upstairs and played countless punk records for him. Listening to punk changed Grohl’s life. music made him realize that music did not have to be complicated or masterful; it could instead consist of “three chords, an open mind, and a microphone” (54). Grohl soon attended his first live concert, Naked Raygun, with Tracey. For the first time in his life, Grohl felt like he had a place and a culture that understood him and with which he could identify. Reflecting on this, Grohl calls himself “a ball of misplaced energy who was looking for his niche” (57).

Grohl found himself in the mosh pit being slammed and tossed around, and he loved every second of it. He felt a sort of freedom and a release from all the anger pent up over his youth, explaining that the sound of punk rock represents inner scars and imperfections. Grohl foreshadows his own stylistic inspiration for his future with Nirvana and the Foo Fighters when he refers to his discovery of Scream, a band that dressed and looked like regular people, like his friends from home. On the drive back home to Virginia, Grohl felt like he would never be the same, as if he was finally growing into the person he was meant to be.

At age 17, Grohl prayed for success. He was not praying to anyone specific, but he knew that he wanted to be successful in music and was convinced that all other great musicians had experienced some sort of divine or mystical energy that allowed them to create such beautiful music. Grohl recalls developing synesthesia—experiencing the activation of a sense as the result of activation of another sense—at a young age as he slowly became obsessed with music; he saw musical notes as visual shapes in his head and deconstructed songs this way. Grohl also developed a habit of playing drums on his own teeth, slowly wearing away the enamel as he mastered the drumbeats to countless songs. Grohl knows only one other person to have had this habit: Kurt Cobain.

Grohl describes this concept as an internal rhythm that each musician has to find within themselves. He calls it “feel,” or the divine and sacred relationship that musicians have with their music. John Bonham of Led Zeppelin’s “feel” with his drumming had a unique effect on Grohl, causing him to hear voices. Grohl describes Bonham’s drumming as “a language of his own, his irreplicable DNA laid bare on vinyl” (68). As a teen, Grohl began questioning why Bonham had such a special effect on him and what it was about Bonham’s feel that inspired him. Music became a source of faith and religion for Grohl. He prayed to a Bonham shrine, adorning it with Bonham’s holy trinity symbol as well as the number 606, a sacred number for Grohl. As he reflects back on this, Grohl believes that the success he has experienced is something he manifested through his own will and by “calling upon the universe” (69). He also jokingly remarks that perhaps instead he “sold [his] soul for rock and roll” (69).