Dave Grohl
My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn't have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.Collection: Family
There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more.Collection: Wedding
Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.Collection: History
It was that famous joke: What's the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? 'Hey, I wrote a song.'Collection: Famous
I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?Collection: Music
Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.Collection: Music
I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.Collection: Music
I didn't start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born - I started getting wicked BO. You know there's a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.Collection: Dad
Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America - land of the free, home of the brave.Collection: Home
It's funny; recently I've started to notice people's impersonations of me, and it's basically like a hyperactive child.Collection: Funny
There's a reason why the Foo Fighters don't blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that's hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn't really come up, or it just hasn't felt right.Collection: Respect
No one has any faith in the tape anymore - everyone just relies on computers and considers the hardrive to be the safest option, and I don't. I think an analog tape is something you can hold.Collection: Faith
Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down.Collection: Beauty
I have crazy claustrophobic dreams, weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down - oh my God, it's a casket. Just freaky stuff like that.Collection: Dreams
Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it's just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.Collection: Music
There's poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don't like doing what people expect me to do.Collection: Poetry
I'm happy that I have my family, and I'm happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing's changed, really.Collection: Space
In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can't replace the magic of four people in a room playing.Collection: Age
When digital technology started becoming the norm, you've got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won't last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.Collection: Technology
Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument - learning to do your craft - that's the most important thing! It's not about what goes on in a computer!Collection: Learning
Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.
When you're young, you're not afraid of what comes next. You're excited by it.
If there's one thing I'm good at, it's gathering people together to do something fun.
Wow, I get to wake up again? Ok. You have to make good with what you've got.
A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It's an individual-feel thing, you know?
I've experienced great things, I've experienced great tragedies. I've done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there's more.
I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.
When there's so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you've already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?
I'm kind of claustrophobic... It's not even like enclosed spaces. It's like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can't get out.
I had a Super Grover doll growing up. Super Grover was very clumsy, he wasn't very good-looking. But in his own way he'd always save the day.
From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time.
A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.
I never needed much, and I never thought I'd get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.
I don't think of Kurt as 'Kurt Cobain from Nirvana'. I think of him as 'Kurt'. It's something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.
The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.
At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.
Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.
I'd love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.
When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine - it kinda sucks the life out of music.
It's good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that's better than you'd imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.
I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can't let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn't even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.
Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you've ever talked to that dude, he's the sweetest guy in the world - he's just a trip.
I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.
When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer - I don't know if they'd ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.
There's always gonna be rock n' roll bands, there's always gonna be kids that love rock n' roll records, and there will always be rock n' roll.
Give me something to assemble, I won't look at the directions, I'll try to figure it out by myself. It's why I love Ikea furniture.
Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn't a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn't want to have some contrived composition.
I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it'd take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn't want to retreat.
When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.