Dave Grohl on Overcoming Fear and Pursue Your Dream | Happy Place Podcast

hello dave hi are you good yes i love your book so much you read it i read every page i cried twice with joy not sadness good two joyful tearfuls and it's just packed with the best stories ever the storyteller storytelling is so important and so underrated and the thing that i found was when i was reading the book i consciously didn't play it safe in my life because i kept thinking that's not a story there's no story there right you've got to take risks you do uh first of all both of my parents were brilliant writers so my mother was a public school teacher she was a creative writing teacher and also a public speaking teacher she was a forensics coach and a debate coach and so she is a brilliant woman my father was a a speechwriter and a journalist and so like not only the spoken word but written word was always in our family it was it was kind of respected in a way um i was a terrible student i'm a high school dropout so i don't have any formal training to write but growing up in my household um whether it was having articulation drills at dinner wow what does that involve that means uh my mother would give you a subject and you'd have to talk about it for three or four minutes without breaking speech without saying um or like or so you you paid attention to not only uh what you were saying but the cadence of how you were speaking um and then my father and i once we started using email we would go back and forth we had this email correspondence where he would send me notes from home i would send him notes from the road and um it was great because after a while he's he was such a brilliant writer he said you're becoming you're becoming a great writer david he said your writing has punch and punches power and that was like my life's greatest validation yeah so um yeah so i really enjoyed writing and uh doing it the way that i did it in the short story format it wasn't i wasn't writing some like chronological bio i was just telling these stories because that's all we did in my family my entire life was tell stories but it's really underrated i think we sort of we just don't value storytelling and it's one of the most beautiful things how stories pass through families and i mean certainly this podcast is just storytelling and the amount i've learned over the last however many episodes we've done literally from stories it's the most beautiful thing um and i love how you start the book talking about the fact that you look in the mirror and you sort of forget that you've aged and i really that resonated because i mentally sometimes feel like 18 and i sort of worry is that okay i'm in my 40s i need to sort of feel grown up now but maybe it's a it's a good thing it keeps you curious it keeps you excited about life well i think first of all it's when i look in the mirror that i am reminded how old i am like that's what happens when i'm if i spend the day just running around i feel like i'm 27 years old and then i take one look i'm like jesus [ __ ] christ what happened um no i think you know the most important thing is like is is the the life for the youth that you feel within you and um and i think there is something to growing old gracefully and i don't think that has to do with physicality i think that has to do with your spirit so you know there was this funny instance at a benefit concert where i was surrounded by all of these legendary rock stars who were all aging and um and i was in a room with one that was trying their best to like fend off the aging process and then another who had totally embraced it and just looked like an old [ __ ] hot rod you know i think in the book i say one looks like an old wall with too many layers of paint and the other one looked like a vintage burnout hot rod and it was in that moment that i realized like oh yeah right so i'm i think i'm that guy yeah and if when i grow up that's like i want to be that guy eventually way down the line you know i'm heading fully towards witch like i'm happy with that i'm going witch there's nothing wrong with being a witch i'm really cool with it i might be a witch yeah that's a great look it's a great look um the book is just full of these seminal moments or very important people in your life and one of the most important moments seems to be that gig that you went to the first sort of punk gig you went to to see a band called naked raygun who are a local band to you and that was this sort of eureka moment yes which was phenomenal to read about because we've all as music lovers sort of been to gigs and felt that power and oh my god something's changing but you'll just walk away and go cool but for you this was then yeah this is my life's mission and you that was your focus from that second onwards well so when i was young i bought rock and roll records beatles records and kiss records and rush records and zeppelin records and acdc and i had those posters on my wall and you know looking at those posters there were like lasers and dragons and explosions and makeup and stage lights and so i kind of imagined that's what rock and roll was and in a way it seemed unattainable it was like oh well that's a whole other world that's not human that's some other thing and uh and i had never seen a live band and i went to that punk rock club and i saw this band and there were no lights and no lasers and no dragons there were like four dudes on stage and they knew four chords and it was right in your face and the singer was on top of my head and there was spit and blood and puke and shh everywhere and then it was so [ __ ] loud i was just like oh my this is rock and roll like this i think is what it's all about and so um and the fact that i was like i know those four chords look i i can play this song that's what inspired me the most and it was sort of that you know the it was the human element and the relatability that i was like okay well i'm gonna do this too for no other reason than just to do it i mean this band i didn't think was gonna become the biggest band in the world i never thought i would be in the biggest band in the world i just wanted to play rock and roll with my friends and um i still do yeah and there's that this is one of the tearful moments for me was actually there are three tearful moments the end of the book where you're playing at wrigley's field fields and you realize you're opposite that venue the cubby bear where you'd seen that first gig and it was like this moment of you're sort of seeing like the acorn and the oak tree you're getting the full thing of like that was the beginning and now here you are with the foo fighters playing to tens of thousands of people hundred thousand people well this is one of the cool things is that i didn't even really make that deep of a correlation until i started writing and i realized oh it's just a crosswalk away yeah and so what began in that little punk rock club was only a crosswalk away from what we what i know now and i made my way across that crosswalk with all of these different people in the book so spoiler alert like that's sorry but i mean you know it in writing it was those i'd have those moments where i'd i just have these realizations that um which is great because i don't really spend too much time looking back i mean i'm constantly reminded of it when i'm doing interviews and things like that anniversaries you know they come up and i get asked about the past but i'm more concerned with like oh my god i have to do a one-man show at the savoy tonight then it's not just me sitting with a book playing a guitar it's an involved production yeah that i wrote five days ago and i have to memorize wow okay so so i'm just trying to get through like this afternoon and then get to the next day get to the next day um so yeah so in writing the book it was like you know i got to look back on a lot of things that i hadn't really thought about a long time but also to honor the fact that like you manifested all of that you had this vision at that gig and then you were like i'm gonna do that which you did which is very rare very unusual situation to find yourself in manifesting that exact dream and it was amazing how sort of intuitive you were as a kid because you built a little altar and you didn't really know what you were doing with that but they felt that well that's what i'm talking about being a witch man i'm not sure if i'm one or not well i mean the craziest thing and this is true that there's a story in the book about this girl that broke my heart in seventh grade i love that story sandy man it's first week of school i saw her she's the most beautiful girl i'd ever seen in my entire life and i was like i must have sandy so i asked her to be my girlfriend we like held hands and like kissed by the bus for like about a week and a half and then she was like you know i'm new here and i don't want to get tied down this is seventh grade yes heartbreaking and she totally just destroyed i was devastated and i had this dream that night that i was on stage in a rock band doing a guitar solo at the lip of the stage sold out packed arena of adoring fans just and i look down and i see her in the front row crying her eyes out just consumed with regret so much regret she dumped me she should have just held on and uh 30 years later i play the hometown gig and i'm [ __ ] on stage playing a lead to an arena of adoring fans and i looked down and she was right there just like in my dream except she was not crying all full of regret she was looking at me she was like you're such a [ __ ] [ __ ] oh it's so good but it's so wonderful that you and you you had this kind of mantra that you wrote in the book which sort of plays into this law of attraction and you say uh what you think you become what you feel you attract what you imagine you create which is you know we've talked about this in the podcast with rhonda byrne who wrote the secret and that amazing notion of being in that alignment and and then it coming into your life but equally we've probably all had times where we've been on the opposite side of the coin we've been stuck in a negative cycle and bad shit's coming our way have you found that do you slip into that or are you quite good at getting yourself back into the positive mindset well you know it's funny i knew nothing about the secret or the law of attraction or manifestation until i started writing the book somebody's like oh this law of attraction i'm like what's that they're like oh it's that oprah book secret or whatever it was and so i started kind of researching it i'm like oh yeah but no there was this there was a punk rock band from washington dc called the bad brains and their whole thing was sort of based on what they called pma which is a positive mental attitude and um there was a writer who sort of came up with the concept years ago and the whole thing was if you can perceive it you can achieve it and i honestly felt that way when i was a kid like you know growing up with your mother's a public school teacher trying to support two kids like we we didn't have anything like we didn't have we barely had money to keep the heat on at the phone on but we were happy and so um i i truly thought i could do anything i'd sort of still feel that way but i really felt like i could do anything um as long as i did it my way i'd figure it out and i could do it and so i i i've i've always had that sort of energy and i do believe that if you put yourself if you put the thought or that energy out there there is some sort of return like that seance thing i had when i was 17 in my carport in my like garage or whatever i thought like okay i'm i need to become a musician like i need to become i need that magical thing that those other guys have so i literally made an altar and sat down in front of it and prayed to the universe yeah that it would happen and it happened and there's part of me that sometimes i'm like did i [ __ ] sell my soul to the devil like what did i do that i think you were just so in alignment with it and yeah you know if there's no doubt you don't allow room for it you just keep going and i think probably the only thing that stops us from manifesting what we want is fear absolutely well that's the thing is like you know it's almost uh with children um [Music] they'd they probably feel the same in that there's no there's no restriction to imagination and you can kind of do anything uh you put your mind to it's as you grow older in life that you start to like become callous in this way that you know you you just imagine that that something isn't uh possible and i i'm of the of the i have this theory that there's two types of people in the world the type of person that when presented with an idea or a challenge they say okay let's figure that out then there's the other type that immediately immediately thinks of all the reasons why it can't be done and i'm of course you know the type that just wants to like figure it out let's do it let's figure it out um and it doesn't really matter what it is i i really i i'm i'm i'm [ __ ] confident or cocky enough that i feel like okay give it to me i'll figure it out and do it because it's interesting you put when you were having that moment at wrigley's field where you were like wow i was across the street as a kid yeah and and now you're doing what you're doing you said how did i get here like perhaps was it because i i had the audacity to have self-belief but it's so weird that we think it's audacious to believe in ourselves like that's a strange concept there's so many things in life that make you feel otherwise yeah you know um that whether it's you know self-esteem or self-image or the confidence to to try something that you don't know uh you'll be able to do um my mother ages ago i was talking to her about something she grew up in rural ohio kind of like not a big farm but kind of like a little tiny farm thing in the 50s and i remember asking her about peer pressure um in her community and she said she said you know i never compared myself to other people i always felt like i was just my own person and that was huge to me because no one says that i mean they might now but in the 50s absolutely no and so um i've always kind of felt the same way and uh you know it's empowering to feel that way i tell my daughters that you know when violet was eight or nine years old she's 15 now she came to me and she said um hey dad i want to shave my head i said really how's that i thought i thought she was trying to grow it out i'm like i thought you're trying to grow it out she goes well i was but then i realized that all the other kids in school have long hair and i'm not like them i'm different from them i was like give me the clippers let's go let's go do it shave it right now let's go that's awesome yeah i think the only time in the book where you could see that you had that moment of i feel a bit scared was when scream that first punk band you were playing with said come join come tour and you said you actually felt a bit scared that you had you'd have to grow up and like be an adult and go and do something but you changed your life okay no i mean yeah i've you know i've hit a few crossroads in my life and it's in those moments where you have to make that decision and that can be scary because you know in making any decision you have to commit to uh to the consequence of that decision so um that was one i mean at that time i was like 17 or 18 years old then i realized that if i were to join this ban it would sort of set my life in a direction um that would take me away from the comfort of home and my friends and the security of that and uh you know my mother almost encouraged me though she was a high school teacher and i was dropping out of high school the [ __ ] one that she taught at wow um she's like no you you should do that and you better be good though like you've got to be good if you're going to do this and it was you know it was really it was inspiring but um that's happened more than a few times you know joining scream and then leaving scream to join nirvana and then after nirvana starting the foo fighters it's like you hit these points in your life where rather than just get sort of stuck in the quicksand of that moment you sometimes have to do take drastic or extreme measures to get out of it and um i did and do you reckon that is that you just have a strong intuition like a good gut feeling because it seems like those moments that you've mentioned and also when you were sort of playing with the idea of the foo fighters but tom petty was like hey come join the band come play but you kind of knew that is an amazing offer but this just feels right over here was that just awesome i usually steer myself towards things that i'm not entirely sure i can do why do you think that is because it's so much more fun right there's no safety net why the [ __ ] not life's too short to just sort of do the thing that you know how to do all the time yeah [ __ ] that let's like do something that we have no idea what's gonna happen that's kind of my thing like you know i knew that i could go play drums with tom petty i didn't feel like i was the right person to do it but i knew i could um i had i hadn't the slightest idea how to be the front man of a band that's why i did it you know same with leaving home at 18 years old or joining nirvana moving up with a bunch of strangers and i had there was just like it's kind of fun when there's no safety net it's interesting isn't it because i i i feel like i was a bigger risk taker when i was younger for sure and that led me to some amazing opportunities i still try and push myself now but i am more sort of risk adverse but i think we all have our own little barometer of that just feels like i've pushed it too far do you have that or you just always let's just go for it and free fall and see what happens what was the part about pushing it too far like do you have like a okay uh it depends i guess it just depends yeah i mean i do have like a healthy sense of consequence not that that makes me stop doing the things that i should not be doing but you know like i think that um [Music] i think that i think that there's some adventure in in not knowing what comes next and having the confidence to discover that um you know as you get older of course like you know it it becomes it becomes more and more it becomes more and more of a a an issue of survival yeah right like i mean i surely wouldn't do half the [ __ ] i did [ __ ] 25 years ago like crazy stuff yeah but you know it's like but i do know that in order to keep life uh entertaining or keep keep to stay alive i need to do things that um you know that that i don't know how to do and also i guess like feeling willing to make mistakes because i feel like in society today everybody is so worried about making a mistake and what the what the outside world will say but we've got to do we've got to put ourselves in that position well you know i also tell my kids this like you know there's this there's they're really heavy expectations on kids when they're young in school that if like some sort of early failure is going to dictate their life path and yeah some they could get a bad grade or they miss a day in school or whatever it is that you know as parents you of course you want to make sure that they they stick with their responsibilities and stuff but um but i try to explain to my kids like it's okay to make mistakes like it just is you know nobody's perfect um and uh i also have always felt like i'm just going to make a mistake and so i accept them when they happen you know it's like teaching myself to play music that in teaching myself to play guitar or drums or any of that [ __ ] um i i don't know what's right or wrong when i do that so um so when i play and i and i and i make some sort of mistake i'd sort of fall back on that like oh well what am i going to do i have no clue what i'm doing so expect more do you think you have to like yourself to do that i i think you have to kind of have self-compassion so that you don't beat yourself up about something when it goes wrong well i think that makes you like yourself more you know i think it you know i i i can only speak for myself but um i you know it a lot of it has to do with like self acceptance yeah the good things and the bad things most definitely yeah one of my favorite stories in the book being a big led zeppelin fan is you taking john paul jones to a medieval feast for your birthday there's so many things that are so brilliantly wrong and right about that story it's just the best it's pretty much all wrong i mean the happy ending we started a band and we had a great day started with one of the greatest bands ever it was great that was really fun um yeah that was just that was my 40th birthday party and of course every time i have like a big birthday i invite hundreds of people and we do something ridiculous and it's always really fun and it's usually really juvenile like medieval times which is that restaurant where you eat with your hands and people joust with a led member i mean he was the only one there with an actual english accent so it was you know perfect i thought if he could make it through that night then we could have a band he said he is like it's so good and but there's so many beautiful events like that and like going for dinner with acdc and inviting a new orleans jazz band to come into the restaurant to play that you know you can see again you're sort of manifesting these moments of kind of wildness and things that are the unexpected and those things you know they don't happen by accident you have to kind of push for the like give space for these things to happen to to create some excitement and some just spontaneous joy that seemed like that yeah that dinner was joy well you know the whole book i'm basically writing from the perspective of someone that's having an out-of-body experience and watching all this [ __ ] happen to someone else because i can't believe it it's still it's happening you know and i and would you when you get to meet little richard you're like oh that's my story god this is insane like this man invented rock and roll and i'm and the only person i ever wanted to meet and i said that in an interview someone's who's the one person you wanted me i said little richard that's it and after i got to meet him like i don't give a [ __ ] about anyone else give a [ __ ] absolutely done yeah he does give me presidents and rock stars i don't care man i got to be little richard but it's so funny hearing you say that because you're one of them but you're almost like no of course not that's what i'm saying yeah but i'm not but you are but i'm not okay so that's the thing is like i see you know as these things are happening to me i'm just like this is so weird and i do i think i even say in the book that like you know when moments like that happen i'm convinced i'm like oh this is gonna flash before my eyes as i'm dying like in on my death bed as like life is flashing before your eyes that this is what i'm gonna see i'm gonna see this right now and it happens like every day i'm like [ __ ] i'm gonna see this too [ __ ] this is gonna be a really long holy [ __ ] so and i think about it sometimes so it's like life is flashing before my eyes as it's happening and um it's just weird i think it's weird so it does i mean i think that some people might think like oh you're a [ __ ] rock star you could [ __ ] do that people think you get used to it like that's just you now it's still yeah i get to see ac dc like in the flesh yeah dance swing dancing with them to a jazz band i'm like did i just [ __ ] take mushrooms what's going on right now that's i cried at that moment when brian turned to you and said i'm really [ __ ] happy i cried because you could feel the euphoria like what a beautiful moment i don't expect him to say that that's a gorgeous listen a life should be filled with these moments where you find joy right okay it's really serious it's all i'm trying to [ __ ] do here man yes i know and it's a gorgeous thing because i think we all i get very serious sometimes why am i being so serious i want to cultivate more moments of joy it's very very important your book highlights that i think i'm not sure when i sort of realized this but you know when you're in the midst of a crisis when you're deep in crisis it's hard to see above it or outside of it but you have to remind yourself of the big picture all the time like i really honestly believe it even in the depths of like the darkest [ __ ] day you have to remember the bigger picture and i don't mean that year i don't even mean your lifetime i mean like the stars in the [ __ ] universe and like you have to imagine some bigger picture in order to make yourself through any of those crises um so and i deal with those every day yeah no i i was doing that last night when i get a sort of uh cyclical insomnia where i have like these panic things i've been having it for like two weeks again i'm like why is this back i've got really busy week at work and i have to go to i'm a tiny speck lying on a floating ball in space with moons and other planets how bad could it be yeah like you show up and you feel like [ __ ] and you're too tired and you have too many coffees and then you [ __ ] go to the bar and have six whiskeys and you take three advil and you're [ __ ] you'll make it you'll make your way through exactly yeah you do have but it's bigger picture stuff you've got to do that absolutely has there ever been a moment where you haven't been able to to get that perspective yes i mean i remember after the foo fighters made our second record like everyone was [ __ ] quitting the band and i had nowhere to live and i was going through a divorce and i didn't have any [ __ ] money and i was sleeping in my friend's back room in his house and his dog would piss on me every night this [ __ ] dog named dinky would come and [ __ ] piss on my bed with me in it every night and i'm like this is oh my i'm surrounded by [ __ ] crisis and i i remember i had this journal that i was writing lyrics in and i would list all of my problems i thought if i think of all of these things at the same time i'll have a nervous breakdown i'll be committed um so i would kind of list them and i would only think about them one at a time and think like okay how am i gonna [ __ ] solve this problem and i would sort of like go down the list and then kind of like just cross them off um if i were to think of all of those things at the same time i would have lost my [ __ ] mind so i try not to do that that's a really good way of doing it because it is i think it's overwhelming that's my next book my next book is a self-help book please [ __ ] you know on manifesting and breaking down your problems oh my god no but you're doing it you're living proof that you're doing it because it's not like you've just had this easy ride to get to where you're at you've had huge hurdles and challenges and stuff that you've had to deal with but you have to take the fun part man yeah like this is [ __ ] boring i'm kidding i was kidding that was supposed to be funny laugh everyone cute laughter um no that's what i know i mean that's the thing it's like when it's going well it's it's [ __ ] great it's all good right yeah that's the thing it's like back then when we're like surviving off of three corn dogs a day and [ __ ] sleeping in the club or in a squat or things like that um of course when you're young that seems a bit more exotic and adventurous but as you grow older you know that i feel fortunate to have had those experiences because they've set this foundation for me so that now if i walk in to a gig and there's like like free beer i'm like there's [ __ ] free beer here you know what i mean like i still for real let's be grateful just be grateful i mean because otherwise i would have you know but that's again i would have been the manager of the shakies pizza that i used to work at not just the pizza guy but that attitude is rare i think when you're top of your game because there is a level of expectation that things will be as you want them to and things go will go well but i think gratitude is is seriously important yeah it's huge and i'd uh you know i hope that most other uh musicians and artists really do embrace that because it can also be fleeting you know i when when nirvana first became popular my dad was like you know this isn't going to last right i was like no no of course not like why would it this is i feel like i hit the [ __ ] jackpot he was like you got to treat every check you make like it's the last one you'll ever make i'm like of course and then um you know 10 years later he's like you know this isn't going to last so um i think you have to you really have to like be grateful and feel fortunate for every day because it might be your last one yeah i mean that's the way like when foo fighters go play gigs now oh my [ __ ] god we're on fire we're the best band we've ever been right now and one of the reasons is when we hit the stage it's like the first show we've ever played and maybe could be the last and the audience is like that might be the last one they see for what so it's just this [ __ ] cathartic transcended explosion of just like i don't want to get off the stage sometimes after that three hours i know and i look at the audience and they're yawning i'm like they're good i swear too and i was like i've missed my cab they've lost trains i know yeah i'm into it it's a beautiful thing and you know when you were talking about that when you were praying at your altar and you were hoping for this sort of intangible mystic element to help you with this mission in life do you think that plays into the moments where you're songwriting is there something else that's helping you sort of channel what you're creating the right notes the right lyrics is there something else at play uh well i don't know that's a good question maybe i mean usually when you're inspired to write it's coming from kind of a specific place at least for me um [Music] so i i there's a bit more focus to it i think when we're doing that making records and things i don't know that's a good question i never thought of it that way no i mean you know the thing when i talk about that intangible element um it has to do with feel and how each musician plays their instrument differently so you could have a sheet of music and have three different musicians play that same piece and they'll play it three different ways because it's determined by a few things one your heart another your hands um but each and as a drummer feel is a really big deal because that becomes your signature that's what people recognize when they hear the sound whether it's the drummer of led zeppelin the drummer of acdc charlie watts rest in peace durango star it's like if you can listen to 20 seconds of that drummer and know who they are that to me means they've achieved like great success because it's their feel and that's not something you could teach so you either [ __ ] ask for the universe for it in some weird seance or you just let it be and um yeah yeah what the [ __ ] are we talking about right now [Laughter] well thank you the book is i'm not bullshitting you in any sense it's one of the greatest books it's so beautiful the stories are phenomenal in it i did not want it to end i love love loved it i think i'm going to write another one please how many stories are on the cutting room floor there must be so many well that was the hardest part it was like choosing what not to put it back it was like oh my god so i i had already made this list of like 30 or 40 stories that i was going to write for this instagram page thing that yeah yeah and um so i just handed that list over to the publisher and my editor and she was like okay i want that one that one that one and that one do you have three weeks ago wow and then i wait until like two days beforehand i'm like oh [ __ ] just like blast it out but um yeah i'd love to do it again i was really sad when i hit send on the last story like i was actually kind of sad yeah i bet it's so lovely to relive it all well thanks for writing it and it's so lovely to see you and to talk and thank you for being part of this today [Music] you

Channel: Fearne Cotton's Happy Place

Views: 118,569

Keywords: Fearne Cotton YouTube Channel, Happy Place podcast, Fearne Cotton Dave Grohl episode, Fearne Cotton podcast, Dave Grohl interview, Dave Grohl book the storyteller, Dave Grohl Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl making mistakes, Celebrities who believe law of attraction, Overcome perfectionism, Dave Grohl on Overcoming Fear and Pursue Your Dream, Dave Grohl Kurt Cobain dream, Dave Grohl Nevermind Nirvana, Dave Grohl on joining Nirvana, Dave Grohl confessions god rock, Pursuit of dreams

Id: 41DOpN366PE

Length: 33min 58sec (2038 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/cjester1121]

This was a great interview. Listened to it on my way to work. He is a true eternal optimist.

[u/beautiful-veins]

This was great, everything Dave says resonates with me....he’s helping me through a lot of stuff with these interviews! Can he be my personal therapist?

[u/beautiful-veins]

Oh I didn’t realise there was a video, I listened to the podcast...this is even more awesome!

[u/DubYa_47]

Love him. Through the February Stars, to the moon and back. So distracted by his neck tho.