Virginia Grohl In-studio on Jonesy's Jukebox

oh yeah I'm fine thanks yeah thanks for coming in now do you like me to say your whole name oh well you could say it once and just get it over with I'm own Hanlon penguin-san Irish name he was O'Hanlon at what point close Irish in it roll I was pretty German kind of German Irish a little German yeah how are you I'm good thanks for coming in they're just happy to so you got you got a book thing tomorrow with your son at the Grove bounds and Noble at the Grove we'll do a conversation they call it you just plop down in some chairs and he starts talking yeah and then I get in every you know ten minutes or so yeah get into word it's very comfortable it's fun you know you was at the festival of books last week on a Saturday when you yes I would I went on a Sunday I've got a book out too oh you do yeah are you doing the conversations I did I did the conversation maybe you should join us and I did Barnes & Noble - yeah yeah and I did book so when the new you'll promote it there are you doing any touring around the country or just staying we went to New York and did the strand bookstore yeah I did that one that's a good one yes it is it was it just you or you and your son me and my son and then we went to DC and we did it at the black cat a small rock club there oh yeah yeah which usually has well Bob Mould was playing that night and we had the early time on stage and a thousand people came well 2000 showed up on me no kidding no kidding why did just two here two people talk about nothing they plan to talk about well use seven books to to I they probably wanted to get a yes so I signed a whole lot of books yeah five hundred and fifty as a matter of fact in record time I sold two thousand and seventy five thousand so jealous well it well tell me the title of your book lonely boy oh I must read that yes yes you should talk to my mom you have one here I don't know there could be one somewhere over to the other side we could probably get someone to get one if someone over you would side for me before I leave here wouldn't you oh very nice depends others goes okay now of course a lot right then so yeah my mum my mum is is in it but I don't really have a relationship you should you should have a chat with her well I should have either either weird upbringing with my mum where were you in London Oh West London yeah you'd been there I've been to London I'm not sure which part is which part but I do love London yeah how long did it take you to do the book it took three years because I had to travel a lot to meet all these mothers on it and they were all over one was in London which old unknown I would've sent you around my mum she lives in Putney maybe I'll do that as my next book mothers of radio stars how would that one go on I'm feeding as many not many radio stars I need me I was thinking Howard Stern I don't know he's history I know nothing about you guys I must say let's go back round here so okay okay well it took me three years and I I made very good friends because the women I talked to were people I hadn't met before and we just had this incredible thing in common that other mothers can't talk about they don't understand that part of the mother-son journey her mother daughter and so we became good friends and and now I'm hearing from them now that the books out and they're all they're all happy with it because they're in it that's yeah and they don't mind the way their stories turned out though so that's pretty good I was a little worried a few cases but they they quite like it did though is there one common theme or mothers was it old boys sons or was about women there was parental Lambert amy winehouse I was in the London yes Kelly Clarkson I tried to get more women actually that one of my goals was to have more women and they were harder to get to say yes to do the book because their mothers were with with women jealous of this it was no I don't think so I never thought of that because mothers boys is like mothers boys right and sometimes the mothers and daughters always getting into it each other that's not as easy a relationship I understand just traditionally but what I think was the case was that the mothers of the daughters were maybe more protective than they would have been of sons and maybe rightfully so because I don't think women in music or any other place are as fairly treated when people write about them they write about oh how they look and how much weight they've gained and what their latest love stories been and it is not so much about the music as it is about all the other things go with it so well that's why it's good a woman is doing that because then you will understand as opposed to a man writing about woman it's good that you're doing it about other women right and I yeah but the ones I got were intensely interesting and I was delighted to have them you live another life some of the time I'm here and in Virginia you know from see oh no no David grew up in Virginia right outside DC so that's where our home is and then of course you came out here and so now my whole family's here my daughter's here my son's here my grandchildren are here so so there's it's hard to be somewhere else yeah so it is Dave only child I have a daughter I haven't looked at this book yes and forgive me if I don't know I recommend it well I've got it okay good I don't read books but I hear was really good at theirs Nadia book - did you do that I did I did mine - okay was that a nightmare or what I loved it you're kidding me it was four days sitting down what days hmm it took me 60 hours to do mine is that more than four days how many hours ago did you do I'm old so they're easy on me they thought she can make it if we give her four days stretch it out that's incredible how many hours a day did you do doing it though I don't know I had time out for lunch came in in the morning I'm not sure maybe six hours a day you must have went to school though he probably got good reading skills like normal reading skills well I did teach public speaking so you see yeah that's well you do though I enjoyed it I'm glad I did mine sir from it's good when it's from the earth I didn't want anybody else doing it yeah and I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it but I did and so I hope people enjoy it and at the end of it for the special deal on if you buy the audio book they had David come in because he wrote the preface to the book you'll see when you open it and so they had him come in and then he and I did that was our first conversation yeah so we did a 20 minute chat so you've done a bunch of it so you've done a bunch of this then this is not new right now you've been on the road for a week oh that's it yeah my experience goes maybe a week and a half so that's it I'm still sort of new to it did you ever go on the road with the food fliers I did quite a few times I had a great time yeah I went places I'd never get sick I went to Australia I went to Japan went to London and Ireland many many times I've been to the Reading Festival I think seven times have you yes once well then that's one place I'm ahead of you is somebody keeping score here is their little checklist you're a real RocknRolla I I have been I don't like going out I'm not staying at home I don't even like traveling really yeah well yeah the traveling part is getting worse and more wearing all the time but once I get there I'm really happy out there so yeah I've enjoyed festival times especially are fun and I love being in Ireland that's always great I sort of feel like I belong there I don't know what you Moza hey if everybody would go with me i I think I'd be happy there we're about an island there's some places south of Dublin now and not out in the country yes yes it's just so beautiful there is I get a lot lying that's why yes of course in studies Green yeah yeah it's wonderful um did you did you uh you should have interviewed fill in a fill line that's mom nothing she lives in Ireland I've said Lizzie the band Thin Lizzy I didn't interview anybody from them no she has a museum there actually - Lizzie / Phil Lynott okay yeah I think she's still alive you know the band's been Lizzie not very well I must say I know your boy does yeah well he knows it all yeah as he played with them what he's dead so but he plays he plays some of their songs okay I think it's on the I think it plays a Finn Lizzie's song on the rare we got that right let's play fit Lizzie one okay this is this is your boy through fires doing a Thin Lizzy song great we're here with Virginia Hammond grow David's mum she's got a book out there doing a thing tomorrow at the the grove of Barnes and Noble at 7:00 p.m. you ready to rock and roll let's go take your way son you're listening to Jonesy's jukebox on Klos with my guest Virginia grow hello good morning you like the music play you know I wasn't listening I was listening to your conversation which I very much enjoyed do you like rock'n'roll I do but what was your what was your when you as a team what was you listening to oh well I was a teen in the 50s so rock and roll I hadn't started yet really I was listening to Blueberry Hill and abdominal yeah things like that very good slow yeah we had good things to dance to and and then and there was a lot of classic sort of big band big bands which I loved and did you notice the big difference from big bands to rock'n'roll now it was more rebellious and everyone didn't like it first yeah everything changed but um I was actually in a girl group in the 50s that's called being the book it is okay you're called the three bells clever name that isn't it and we were pretty good and we sang standards like t42 and you know Rodgers and Hart things so tune things and we were a hit in the community we sang at the Kiwanis Club in the women's City club and things like that there was never any danger in the club's work not going to and our mothers all gave us permission well it was a 55 around then so that's ten years off to the wall and yes yes we're aware of the wall oh I was my father was there my father was a CB in the Navy which meant that he went ahead of the action to build air strips and things so he was in Okinawa and Japan I didn't quite know how much danger he was in but I still have his letters from those days they're the most cherished things I have and you close to you good Barry yeah I remember I remember my grandmother my whole family sitting by the radio listening to Roosevelt and I remember that there were no men around they were all gone all the war and it was all the whole neighborhood was women I remembered rationing and I remember a lot I was you know old enough to know well a little bit about what was going on I was a whoa yes and then after when when he came home and we we had a we had got a lovely house out in the suburbs outside sort of in the country and on the GI Bill and and so we caught up started boom ended in it yes never to start taking off yes yes we calls phryges well people started having cars again and so yeah everybody had one car though was just like that and we we were the community I grew up in and my friends and I we look back on it now and think you know incredible differences that we've seen over the years but it was a very wholesome time it was also a very there are a few years of safety before all the Cold War tensions came and then it we were sort of blissfully happy it was almost like an innocence to it it was for sure yeah so anything so we had we enjoyed singing and different having chosen doing things like that did you wear the same outfit what suits no we had one we had two outfits I guess we had kelly green jumpers jumper is different in America than it as it is in English the Jumbo Dez's sweater and a jumper here is a like a one-piece dress that you wear over a blouse that I hit now in silver like many things I'm sure I all the kids wearing and in silver I wouldn't know but that's what we did so that was fun yeah and it was a short happy career we we didn't look for record deals yeah we just went to college and moved on so you'd looking at it as like being successful with no no never it was the law fun thing to do and we were proud of it we thought well there was a group then called the McGuire sisters hmm Emily of them was afraid yeah and there were three of us so we compared ourselves we thought we were a little better cool set yeah so did you uh what made you what made you want to write a book was it your idea to write a book I had a friend who urged me I had the idea at with her one of us had the idea when we were sitting on the side of a stage and I said I wonder why I'm the only mother here because I've been going to these shows and festivals for a long time there aren't that many other moms there I don't know if you noticed when you were playing probably not a whole lot of mothers backstage my write my Sex Pistols ankled I would have been but I don't know what happened there but anyway she said well you should go find them and I know that sounds terribly simple but as we left the backstage area we were making a list of people to go find and so and she helped me on the first couple she's a music attorney Jill Berliner and so she helped me develop a list and then I started writing letters dear mom how would you like to sit down have a cup of tea and talk yeah so what'd you think what'd you think the concept now that is finished what what what what do you think it's about is about anything other than just interviewing yes it's about how all their histories and their histories are varied they're from very different places and times Geddy Lee's mom grew up in a Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Dave Maddie's mom was in South Africa during apartheid and during the change and she saw that huge shift in history and there were women from the South from Texas and and from Georgia and then so we all had very different stories and and beginnings and histories and I was interested in whether or not and how those histories played into the the relationships and then the music that came from the sons and daughters we had and I found of course that they did when you examine some of the lyrics from Dave Matthews you see those stories and from Geddy Lee and so and then the other thing was that what we had in common in the raising of musicians so we bonded very quickly we had I had a wonderful time talking to them and and knowing of getting to know them and still keep in touch with them how was it um talking to anyone else his mom was she still alive when you did that no she knows she's been dead for two years her mother had I was worried about that one of course and that was one I prepared for the others I went in without an agenda and without background and all that I just showed up we started to talk but for that one I was worried and read three books I think about Amy and she booked him in truth I did that was later but her mother had written a book about her that came out two days before I got there which I knew nothing about she gave me a copy so we sat in her garden for three or four hours I guess and hers that was the biggest surprise of all the people I talked to because it was an easy conversation and she was very much at peace with everything that had happened and probably the most optimistic person I've ever met in my life mm-hmm just her outlook is well to say sunny sounds ridiculous but it really is almost that she was a tortured soul anyone oh absolutely she started out as a real tiny child she was different and and independent and resistant to any discipline from the very beginning so her mother has been through a lot yeah most suffering yes and she's just very well she says all the time I love life I'm going to live it yeah right yeah well that's a good outlook you got to get on with things I guess so you can't hold on to the past forever otherwise anyone's proof of that I'd say she is yeah okay Virginia grow got a new book out got conversation if your boy tomorrow Dave a Barnes and Noble at the Grove at 7:00 p.m. I'm looking forward to it yeah but bring some pens or you can give me notes on how to do these conversations sir you've been doing those well we're doing it right now this is it that's true that's what this is isn't it yeah enjoying this right yeah my better than you son but talking to you in the viewing if a different accent altogether a massage but it's effective don't you think but I'm doing it they're doing it I do like that get away we murder this accent we play some music let's Velvet Underground I'm waiting for the man Jonesy's jukebox and Klos with Virginia grow

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Length: 22min 48sec (1368 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2017