Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl Talks Music + Making Space for Creativity

hello oh I like the intro music that was Foo Fighters thank you yeah that was me doing piano elevator music for City lab Dave hi alright thank you for being here thanks for having me you're very welcome I don't do this very often we don't do this very often I see so we're all good so I just want to I have to say that they at the outset in the interest of full disclosure that I I consider Dave Grohl to be at least in the non senior citizen division the greatest living rock star so this is this is going great that's where you apply the under $70 off to a good start yeah the under 70 division because a certain somebody just turned 70 as you know Springsteen just turned 70 yeah yeah yeah and he's still going so my my but he looks good I pray that I look like Bruce why I've always played that I look like who's first but yeah he looks great and so the point is is that this is not gonna be and I'm just saying this in the interest of journalistic full disclosure not gonna be the hardest-hitting interview in the history of the world this is not like Mike Pompeo and Ukraine or something although if you want to answer questions about Ukraine just don't make me cry no so so we're gonna talk along the theme of this conference but those of you who don't know Dave Grohl actually one of the one of the reasons that Dave is here is that he did a wonderful eight part series for HBO called sonic highways and we'll talk about it in in a minute but before we get to that I just maybe we can talk a little about your your early days here in this very city I first knew a little bit about Dave Grohl when he was in a band called scream which was like 35 years it was the mid eighties it was the mid 80s but but my full consciousness of dave grohl happened when a lot of people got full consciousness of Dave world during the Nirvana period and then of course immense long-term success with Foo Fighters but let's talk about DC and talk about how this particular area shaped your musical development well one of the great things about Washington DC is first of all there's a lot of musical diversity right so from from the different neighborhoods that sort of represent different culture to to the different styles and genres of music you had everything you know there was there was there was kind of a southern rock influence you had bands like remember the railroad ducks okay but there was you have to say it's yeah you do that's how you pronounce it it's Road ducks so but and then you had this really influential and important underground punk rock scene here and then you also had go-go music which is a specific type of funk that really is only in Washington DC so there was there was something and that and it was it was a small community of musicians that I think we're all doing it just for the sake of playing music so there was it really was a community and that people would help and support each other right I think very independent to both sides of that divide I mean actually it's kind of almost a Rock Creek Park divided on the west side of the park there is Ian Makai and Minor Threat and on the east side of the park there was trouble funk and Chuck B that's like actually this is a good moment if we can queue up there's we have about a 30-second clip from sonic highways we can run that the one on Washington DC and you could get a little sense of what we're talking about will power not only us in advantages town we was like we coordinates music man we was like putting out music like every other week and the music was like spreading like a disease the DIY thing carries through a lot of different music scenes in DC I'm sure you've experienced this where you run into some guy who's like a jazz guy or some funk player you're from the punk scene and you guys relate in a way that's very Washington DC like language I saw real parallel with the go-go thing but never could connect with him because there was a totally different world and then we decided like we should play with Troma [ __ ] save headlight we opened for big boys my earth red troll funk toe if I were interested in it could I heard about the punk scene we were into it we love a go-go thing then there's these punk funk shows they both away to underground type of sounds it just goes together yeah I mean it really did you know there was a DC sound and that series the sonic highways series had a lot to do with how the environment the atmosphere of the place that you're making music how that influences the sound of the music so we went to eight different cities and you know there was a time when everything wasn't so interconnected that that places really did have a regional identity and inevitably that would sort of make its way into the music and the music then sort of becomes the sound or the soundtrack to that city so if you were to talk about if you mentioned Chicago music from Chicago most people think oh the Blues if you mentioned Nashville most people think of Grand Old Opry with Washington DC it wasn't as mainstream as that but the music the punk rock music and the underground rock and roll was it just sounded different than anywhere else as with the go-go scene which really was so regional that it barely made it to Baltimore but that becomes a part of the city's identity that you're proud of and also the ethics within so like the the DIY thing that Ian Makai was talking about to me that's like in my formative years as a musician that's that's how I learned to become a musician I didn't go on the voice and you know sing something once and start flying g-force all over the place it started here in like basements and bars and learning how to work within a community and doing things yourself so that's it's it's actually how the Foo Fighters still work I'm the president of our record company and all I do is I I make records and I license them to Sony BMG and nobody tells us what to do or how to do it and when to do it and it and it's the reason why we survive for 25 years and I learned it from that guy here in Washington DC when I was 15 years old so I'll talk a little bit staying on Washington for a second one of the interesting things about it is it's historically been a racially divided city you're in in this particular episode of sonic highways you're dealing very straight on with the fact that one type of music is developing on this side of the city and other type is developing on that but there was overlap there was a kind of joint appreciation that you didn't find in necessarily other sectors of society especially around that time to talk about it in the in the in the context of race a little bit in this particular region I've never felt like race made any difference with music at all I honestly have never I've been in bands with with African Americans I've been in bands with people that grew up in Arlington Virginia and beautiful in big beautiful houses I've played in bands with people that grew up in South West and I don't I honestly have I feel like music and it sounds trite and it might seem silly but I honestly believe it's the one thing that everyone can come together with when I go out and play a Foo Fighters show and there's 50,000 people and they all sing the song like my hero or learn to fly or something when when there's 50,000 people singing together in chorus all of those lines just sort of disappear and they might be singing those songs for 50,000 different reasons but I get to bring all together in that one moment so it doesn't matter like what side of the aisle they're on or you know what church they go to whatever it is I honestly believe that that music is the thing that can really bring people together want to ask you a question about a club that was very very important in your development 930 Club yeah the original 930 Club talk about that and this is an audience filled with mayors filled with city planners everyone I shouldn't say everyone wants to have a 930 Club because there's also these noise issues and all other issues that I think make rats do they had big rats original nine-thirty grubs the original 9:30 club you can get a bola in the bathroom I mean it was it was like it was it was bad but but talk about having that kind of place and what it does to help a musical ecosystem develop in a particular place well I think that it's important that I have three children I have three daughters but one of them is now 13 and becoming a musician and of course I help facilitate that whether it's giving her some instruments to learn or a place to record into a microphone or whatever it is not every kid has that place to go or has that opportunity I think that I think that making making those things available to kids is very important for lots of reasons but mostly because I think it makes them happy and a community that that has a rich and exciting vibrant music scene I think that it brings it brings a lot of happiness to the place that it where it is I've always felt like in America you know one of the when we did the sonic highways TV thing I felt like there wasn't enough music on television when you travel the world like if you know if you're awake at 11:30 at night in Italy and you turn on rye you know you're gonna see someone singing opera you're gonna see some festival performance in a parks where you're gonna it's just sort of like more but like a part of the general consciousness or and I think that it it's sort of it's it's important it's like error it's important you need to have that in your life just to remind you that you know life's worth living so somewhere like the 930 Club it was a dump but it was important to generations of people that found inspiration in that crappy little room to go on and do the things that they you know bound up doing in life and I feel like you know we we had that Club but then we would also play in like art galleries and community centers and things like that but I do think that all of the places that you're from deserve to have some an opportunity like that for people to go to experience music people to learn how to play music for people to share music with each other and build a community because now when I talk about Washington DC I'm proud of being from Washington DC when I say I'm a musician from Washington DC people think like you're a badass and I agree some people don't like Washington DC by the way staying on this with one second before we go to we drive across the country to Seattle one part of the one part of this question or this mystery about why certain cities develop these vibrant music scenes is the is that physical ecosystem the clubs and but another is is is the the presence of certain geniuses right like in in this case it's like Ian McKay who fronted Minor Threat and then Fugazi and on the other hand Chuck Brown you know basically without those two we're talking about the musical forms that we're talking about associated with Washington would this kind of thing happen I mean what's more important to it the broad ecosystem or like just the the serendipitous appearance of truly original musicians well I you have to have visionaries you know you have to have people that will think outside of the norm so you know most people would think out god I could never die won't I can't start a band I'll I'm not an accomplished musician and I know nothing about the music industry and so none of us did and so when we when we started playing and writing songs recording and making records when we were young we didn't know what we were doing so there was no right or wrong we were just doing it the way we imagined it should be done and in doing that you're you you do things differently and I think that leads to change so then or progress so you're doing things outside of the norm or the way people normally do them no I think there's there are thousands of musicians in this city right now that could go on to change the course of popular music or whatever it is they do they just need the opportunity to do it and they need for someone to tell them like oh no it's that's available to you and you're entirely capable of doing it you know you have to it's one of the faith being a parent's one of the things I tell my kids I when I was young I thought I could do anything I honestly I felt except to go to college I thought I could do pretty much anything I thought I if I just put my mind to it I'm gonna figure out I'm just gonna figure it out I'm gonna do it I still feel that way I don't know I'm not a director I don't know how to make TV shows but I did a [ __ ] HBO series so it's funny it's honestly and and I think that we did something that people haven't hadn't done yet and and I'm very proud of that but I'm also proud you know when I was asked to come here to to talk today they said what do you what are you talking about I said I haven't the slightest idea and they said really what how can they called you I'm like I have no clue and that's kind of how I float through life kids stay in school don't do drugs is the quasi is the actual answer don't do drugs or just do the right amount of no don't do the drugs that's good let's go out to Seattle and before you address the ATO there's one horse one more clip that we should show from Sonic I was about Seattle I think a lot of bands would skip Seattle because it was just too far of a drive if you're in a band you're traveling around in a van and you know the kind of information traveled the way it did at that time you're really gonna drive 900 miles from California to play a show that's five people in Seattle nowadays everything's interconnected so much that all you have to do is pick up your laptop and see what's going on Tuesday night at that tiny club in Portland Maine when I was young as a touring musician it was a crapshoot you never knew if the promoter had put fliers on the street you never knew if the college radio station was playing your band's music you'd show up to a club and cross your fingers that people would come to the gig so that you could get gas money to go to the next city from Minneapolis to Seattle is 2,000 miles good luck on getting any shows in Spokane or anything forget it you know I got the real sense as a kid that you know the scene in Seattle created itself because nobody else wanted to come up and entertain satellites you know I mean people had to kind of start their own bands and their own scene because that was the only way live music was gonna get played here because nobody was gonna make any money the scene was the network of hobbyists we're just playing for the friends and when you're playing music as a hobby you take more risks and from that attitude a lot of these bands kind of created their own style so you try out to be the drummer of Nirvana you get the you get the gig you go to Seattle what do you find when you go to Seattle what shocked you the most about the music scene compared to what you knew well the isolation first of all the rain you know a part of that conversation that we were just watching had to do with the isolation and that Seattle kind of lived in its own funny little cultural biodome for the longest time you know they just figured well nobody cares we're so far away and what do we have you know fish and Bill Gates or whatever that you know that we'll just sort of do our own thing so when I got there you know what the first when I first got there I hadn't joined Nirvana yet but I went to go see them play and so you have to understand at the time if you were an underground band and 500 people came to see your band you were considered huge right I went to this Nirvana show at this warehouse and there were a thousand people and they were just on an independent label in town but what I noticed was was the identity that the audience they weren't like spiked hair and and chains and and leather jackets they they were kids from they look like kids from trailer parks they had like flannel shirts that they got at the Fred Meyer or The Salvation Army and they were like converse Chuck's and ripped up jeans and they just looked like derelicts I don't know how to say it but it was it was not punk rock scene but it was a youth driven I mean it seemed almost like a movement and whatever it was about the music the sound or the lyric these people were connecting to what was going on these kids were connecting to what was going on in a way that doesn't happen often it happens just before a musical revolution and that's what was happening so I remember that but but again coming from Washington DC you know what when I came to Seattle you know what everyone I said I was from Washington DC all they did was grill me on all the bands that I'd seen did you get to see rites of spring yeah oh my god did you get to see marginal man yeah like so that I mean it's to me that meant like coming from Washington DC again they were like wow that guy's from DC so but you know at the time that city hadn't turned into the Seattle that it eventually became and it all happened really quickly so all of there were four or five bands that blew up really quickly in a matter of months and then it became the Seattle that you know designers started selling flannel shirts for $800 and it's it changed but but what I did notice is that it was the same sort of community that we had here in DC and I think you know when when Bruce pavatt guy that ran Sub Pop Records when he talks about like the hobbyist versus the careerist that says a lot because I think that most of the people that started playing music in these cities didn't necessarily aspire to be the next biggest rock star in the world they just like they had to do something other than you know I worked at Marlo's furniture warehouse and so I would shove trucks full of like sleeper couches all day long I could not wait to play my instrument at the end of the day not because I wanted to be a gigantic rock star I just needed to beat the crap out of something because I was so sick of working at Marlo's Furniture Warehouse and I think that most musicians like if it really comes from like the deep down place then that kind of thing doesn't really matter I want to thank our underwriter Marlo's Furniture Warehouse for I think it's still there it's still there it is absolutely still well it used to be the largest furniture showroom and the DC metropolitan area answer this question because you know Springsteen I don't mean to keep bringing em up what's up with your obsession through Springsteen sorry Bruce Springsteen couldn't make it I'm sorry Jeff just a little old me yeah no no a little old me I've been to like 10 Foo Fighters shows but like sorry 80 Springsteen shows so I apologize in advance but some of you probably know Foo Fighters yeah yeah I love the Atlantic to this my favorite huh I gotta go tomorrow so so so the aforementioned rock star from New Jersey once once said that the the the the thing about the sound that he developed in the 70s and 80s that Asbury Park was isolated even from New York it's only an hour dry but it's still isolated they didn't know what they were making so they just made music that they thought they could make before you know before Springsteen Asbury Park was not as very part right and and so I think you know and listening to what you're taught what will you're talking about here with Seattle the isolation be allows you to just experiment without too much homogenize ation too much outside influence in a kind of way and so the question is are we losing something now you you pick eight very specific in very very different cities for your series and so the question is is technology is the internet you can go on YouTube right now and watch any band in a live performance anywhere in the in the world what are we losing by having that kind of ubiquity human interaction which is important I think that is I think it's I just as we talked about the community I think that it's one thing to see an artist or a song in a one-dimensional Wayne but what's really inspiring is when you see an actual human being on stage with an with an instrument made of wooden wires and one microphone do something so moving that it it conjures emotion and you fall into like a romantic state of loving life because people do great things I have again my daughters it's one thing when they watch this stuff on their phones or YouTube all day long but when I take them to go see an artist on stage it's it's it's so different so yes I do think that it's different in that there isn't so much isolation now that you're influenced by so many more things but the community and the interaction between people is is what's most important whether it's watching a band or just sort of being a part of a community like that's where great things happen do you worry about the creative process when everybody's in found by everything no no I have faith in people's imagination and passion for doing things like we're not done you know musics not done I have one more question about that and then a final question about cities but talk about the state of rock if you will and and the guitar band the guitar based band yeah and I say things to my own kids like you know there's this thing called guitars and you could listen to them and they're really exciting and they and they don't it's not where they're their heads are at talk about the state of rock and roll as we understand it rock an essay questions yeah I mean it's one that I I answer a lot because there are plenty of rock and roll bands none of em are as good as Bruce Springsteen why do you why do you what do you hate Springsteen so much I love Bruce Springsteen why do you love him so much why why do you love them more than me I like you know I can have love for I contain multitude no I think that it's still there you know when we go on tour we play these gigantic shows to thousands of people that are singing every word and it's exciting and it's super fun so it's hard for me it's almost hard for me to comment on it because from where I'm standing it's just great you know like and people people love guitars you know people love these days when we get up on stage you know there's that it's so loud and I'm screaming so hard for three hours and we're going on like right after a guy with the turntable and a microphone and it's just I think there's something really exciting about musicians that go out and kind of leave it all on stage you know the imperfection of that human performance of just like you know that's rock and roll and it's absolutely still there it's not at the forefront of the music industry but listen you know if you if if again my kids I'm looking at my daughter who's picking up instruments of learning them like one a week she's going forward she's got a beautiful voice she's a great singer and all she wants to do is like grab a guitar and write a song and perform it for other people and she's 13 so it's only a matter of time you know these things are cyclical too like it's only a matter of time before the guitar becomes cool again so I you know and I have faith in the next generation of kids that are gonna come out and do things that we just can't even imagine so it's either since we have this audience of people who think a lot about cities and how to make them culturally vibrant um do you have any advice for people who are trying to create places where kids can spontaneously create the kind of music that makes their cities vibrant and exciting all ages venues that's a big deal you know that was one of the things in Washington DC there weren't too many all-ages venues so we had to make them or find and I'm you know that's and I learned to play drums by listening to the records of the bands I was going to see so that so I was inspired and influenced by the bands that I got to see when I was 14 years old or 15 years old and had I had to wait until I was 18 or 21 I might have missed that golden now or window of opportunity which there is by the way every kid in between the ages of 10 and 13 every musician that you've ever seen or heard on the radio it's in between the ages of 10 and 13 that those kids decide this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life it's it's really specific it's not often that you know you you're 25 years old decide to leave it all behind for a rock band it happens when you're 10 or 13 years old but all ages venues is I think that's very important to sort of like to grow and foster a community of younger musicians that will end up I mean wouldn't you love it if your city was famous for music like people it'd be so amazing right like when you think of New Orleans you like it's you know there's no orleans man you know an oral is famous for jazz man and that's like if every city and actually we did New Orleans we did an episode on the sonic highways thing too we were there for a week right every day I was walking in a parade with a drink in my hand and like you know there's 500 people walking down the street with a second-line band and you know parades were just happened like wildfires in Los Angeles it'd be like where the [ __ ] did that come for it like it'll just happen like that and so but it was allowed and you could see what that would do to the city you could see like the joy it didn't no matter what was going on in your day if you heard a second-line marching down the street you're just like oh that's so beautiful if every city would allow that it sounds crazy and unreasonable why not like why not just let music be let it let it walk down the street when it's time to walk down the street or let it kid who's 14 year old fortunate kid walk into a bar and watch maybe not a bar watch watch you know and a musician that's gonna influence them to go on with their life and do great things I do think that you have to give the younger generation more credit I think they deserve more credit and I think they need a place to be able to be free to play music and parades every day so they let me just let me just say in in closing for those of you who don't listen to Foo Fighters it's a great experience to listen to dramas as good as Bruce Springsteen no no no no I was gonna say I was about to say something nice about you gee I get uncomfortable and I know I know praise and criticism right the but I mean he's a remarkable ambassador for for rock for for music for this particular region for Seattle but all but it really for just this is sort of a private view but it's it's ultimately comes down to the songs that you make and the shows that you put on we were talking before about a Foo Fighters show I saw once at George Mason years ago where the power went out but they kept playing anyway because that's what we in the audience were demanding and he was 100 percent hundred fifty percent into it it was kind of a remarkable memorable show that wasn't supposed to go that way but that was made it memorable bills to pay okay the and I will say this about the music I often start my day in the car by listening for the first minute or two of enough space just to get me going yeah just to get me going I follow it with Rosalita by Bruce Springsteen in the E Street Band but then I come back to learn to fly so it's all good could you join me in thanking the great Dave Grohl for joining us say uh thank you very much

Channel: AtlanticLIVE

Views: 74,268

Keywords: citylab, citylab dc, the atlantic, dave grohl, foo fighters, nirvana, music, atlantic live

Id: X2C3NOGGqVM

Length: 31min 36sec (1896 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 01 2019