SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/107645
SXSW Music Keynote: The Many Faces, and Cassette Tapes, of Dave Grohl by Charles R. Cross "And in case you were to mistake his van for someone else's, there was at least one tell-tale sign it was Dave Grohl's and not Dave who works at Burger King: on the floor was a drum head. 'Oh, that's from the Nirvana days,' Dave said as a-matter-of-factly as anyone could say a drum from Nirvana was..." 40 SXSWORLD / FEBRUARY 2013 CHARLES PETERSON O n a couple of occasions in the mid-90s, I ended up as a passenger in Dave Grohl's van. It was actually the Foo Fighters' band van, but in all practicality it was Dave's van, and Dave was driving, which is an apt metaphor for anything to do with the Foo Fighters, and maybe for anything to do with Dave Grohl. At the time Dave preferred driving without a seatbelt, having had two unfortunate run-ins with overzealous airbags. "Once in L.A. I was driving in a parking structure, and it went real low, and the car hit the bottom, and the airbag went off," he told me. "I hate airbags." This was in Seattle though, where Dave lived then, and we were avoiding parking structures of all kinds. The sun visor on the driver's side of Dave's van had a button that read, "My name is Dave and I prefer the Burger King Whopper." Three empty cigarette packs lay on the top of the dash, along with a Costco-sized box of throat lozenges. And in case you were to mistake his van for someone else's, there was at least one tell-tale sign it was Dave Grohl's and not Dave who works at Burger King: on the floor was a drum head. "Oh, that's from the Nirvana days," Dave said as a-matter-of-factly as anyone could say a drum from Nirvana was. But the true talisman in the van, and a keystone to understanding Dave Grohl, came in the form of a pile of cassettes on the floor. Cassettes were old-school technology even back in 1995, made more so by the fact that many of the tapes were without cases, or markings, some old crappy Maxell UR normal bias tape. Dave had spent countless hours driving in band vans, he told me, listening only to cassettes. As a journalist I am inquisitive by nature, and I might have normally pawed through his cassettes, but Dave gave me a better opportunity. He had to stop to pick up some stuff from a music store, and he left me in his van, for what ended up seeming like hours. "Find some tunes to enjoy," he said. The first cassette I grabbed was marked "Hardcore." It was filled with furious punk rock from the likes of the Minutemen, Black Flag, Minor Threat and Scream, Dave's first band. This was the soundtrack to his Dave Grohl onstage at the Foo Fighters debut show (Seattle, March 1994) youth, back from when he was growing up in Northern Virginia. There are still some in the hardcore community who know Dave simply as Scream's drummer. Dave didn't join Nirvana until 1990 — becoming the band's sixth drummer, but maybe the only one that mattered. He moved to the Northwest that year to take the gig, but it didn't immediately mean fame and fortune. He slept for months on Kurt Cobain's couch in a crappy apartment in Olympia when the band had no money. Nevermind changed that, and changed Dave Grohl's life forever. Dave was a talented hardcore drummer, but he has more skills, which was obvious from the next unmarked tape I stuck in the dash. It started with a cacophonous hardcore crash, but quickly shifted into something more melodic, and poppy. It was an unreleased Nirvana rehearsal. Kurt wasn't singing, but you could hear him leading the band along, steering them. "Slower, more like this," Kurt said. On the Nirvana tape, Dave was following Kurt and fitting into the groove with bass player Krist Novoselic, but letting the melody of the song propel it forward. There are many great drummers who can make themselves stand out in a rock song, but Dave's skill is having both power, and beat. And while it is Dave's pounding on the chorus of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that became his signature calling card, his