It’s the morning after the night before, and Dave Grohl is looking slightly bleary-eyed.
Flanked by his Foo Fighters bandmate Nate Mendel in a plush hotel room overlooking St Stephen’s Green, the rock god is gently bemoaning the fact that he had a terrible night’s sleep.
Mendel, meanwhile, is questioning his decision to start drinking whiskey sours at 1am, after the band landed in Dublin following their Other Voices gig in Dingle, 300km away.
“He never sleeps anyway, so it’s fine,” the bassist says, nodding at Grohl, who is sipping a black coffee. “We’ve got two drummers in our band. One of them is always asleep, and one of them can’t sleep.”
Grohl momentarily perks up. “I think Ilan has a disorder. I think he’s narcoleptic – we need to get him to a doctor,” he says of Ilan Rubin, the band’s newest addition. “If he’s not shredding on the drums, he’s dead asleep. It’s f**king crazy.”
It could be the late night; it could be the whiskey hangover. Grohl, who is witty and as reliably quotable as Noel Gallagher, of Oasis, seems a little more subdued than usual.
Still, there’ll be no trace of it later on, when the band play the comparatively tiny Academy and blast through what amounts to a greatest-hits set, with some of their wives watching from the balcony of the Dublin venue. On stage he is a consummate frontman: funny, charismatic and as keen to entertain an audience of 800 as he is a stadium crowd in the run-up to the release of their 12th album.
Perhaps Grohl, who is now 57, is also a little wary of going through the press cycle for Your Favorite Toy knowing the line of questioning that awaits. Foo Fighters have been through a lot in the past few years, and none more so than their frontman, who issued a statement in September 2024 that read: “I’ve recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside of my marriage. I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her. I love my wife and children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness.”
Nirvana: Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic in 1991. Photograph: Paul Bergen/Redferns
For someone often described as the nicest man in rock, the revelation dealt a blow to his good-guy image. It also came off the back of a turbulent few years for Grohl, as he dealt with the death of the band’s drummer Taylor Hawkins, in March 2022, and his mother, Virginia, less than five months later.
The band’s publicist has warned journalists not to ask about Foo Fighters’ personal lives. The closest Grohl comes to referencing it is acknowledging the way music has been a life raft during emotionally tempestuous times. “That’s how this band started, after Nirvana.”
Hawkins was the second bandmate he lost, following the death of Kurt Cobain, in 1994. “After losing Taylor, I’m so grateful that we had this to help us live. I rely on it as a therapy – outside of the therapy that I already do,” Grohl says; the singer recently admitted to going to more than 400 therapy sessions in the past year and a half – six days a week for 70 weeks.
[ Foo Fighters turn St James’ Church, Dingle, into the world’s smallest stadiumOpens in new window ]
“But I really do rely on it. There are times where I’ll write something that I have a hard time saying in conversation, and the end result is something real that you wind up singing every night. It just feels good to f**king scream that shit sometimes, you know? But, yes, very much. There’s not a lot of fiction on this record.”
Each Foo Fighters album, Grohl says, represents a specific period in their lives, and there was a lot of catharsis during the making of But Here We Are, their album from 2023.
“It’s funny, because I can kind of map my life emotionally by the three-year cycle of each album: where your head’s at, where your heart’s at. You really never know what is around the next corner in life and music.”
He shrugs.
Foo Fighters have been through a lot in the past few years. Photograph: Elizabeth Miranda
“The last album was a challenge, and difficult, but necessary. I think we all find comfort in the music, we all find comfort in the band, but we also all find comfort with each other. We’ve known each other for so long that we’ve been through every up and down together.”
He looks to Mendel, who nods in agreement.
“And the great thing about this band is, when needed, we really do rally around each other. But there weren’t many high-fives, because it was a f**king bummer,” he says, grinning. “I just completely browned out the entire room. Very depressing of me.”
If But Here We Are wasn’t a “high-five record”, Your Favorite Toy is comparatively gutsy, simmering with vitriol – as on the title track and songs such as Of All People, which was written after Grohl bumped into a heroin dealer he knew in the 1990s – but also shot through with vulnerability.
Both the title and the lyrics of Unconditional – “Can’t say what’s on my mind, I’m just not sure / I’ll find a better way to explain this to you / There are better days awaiting, it’s true” – take on a weightier meaning, for example, if you imagine a father singing it to his children. The considered Window, meanwhile, was inspired by his daughter’s love of The Breeders.
“She plays the bass, and she’s very much a child of the 1990s,” Grohl says of Harper, who is turning 17, laughing. “Her bedroom posters are Elliott Smith, and Ween, and The Prodigy, and The Breeders, and Sonic Youth, and that’s her world. Her heroes are Kim Deal and Kim Gordon – amazing friends and role models.
“So I came up with this riff that I considered to be like a Breeders song, and she [played on it] and it wound up on our list of demos. And I thought, Okay, well, let’s do it. It sort of changes the tone for a few minutes on the album; otherwise, it’s a really noisy record.”
Musically, Your Favorite Toy was about going back to basics in many ways, and the band were eager to get it done quickly. Rubin did his tracks in seven days; the whole recording process was completed in four weeks.
“It certainly makes for a different kind of record – ‘I’m gonna make it in a garage.’ There’s a deadline which is approaching fast, and the songs are short and fast; we’re not going to be getting into detailed compositions and engineering and production,” Grohl says.
“There’s a consistency, like a band went into a studio in a short period of time and made a record. There’s no ‘Where’s the harp gonna fit on this song?’ So it’s completely different. A lot of the demos were a bit more fusion metal or something.”
He laughs.
“They got a bit too involved. So it was really about just doing it quickly.”
This time they enlisted Oliver Roman, who has worked in-house, at their Studio 606 HQ, for more than a decade, on production duties instead of returning to the studio with Greg Kurstin, whom Foo Fighters made their last three albums with.
Grohl and Mendel have nothing but good things to say about Kurstin – “a f**king genius in the true definition of the term”, the frontman says – but recording with Roman reminded him of working with Butch Vig, who produced Nevermind, Nirvana’s biggest album, from 1991, “where the guy’s just having the best time of his life, and you’re hanging out and making music, and at the end of the day you’re, like, ‘Wait, what do you do?’”
Grohl chuckles.
“Because all we did was laugh all day long, and then it turned out sounding great.”
There was a slightly more contentious change in band personnel last year. Josh Freese, who had been drafted in to replace the late Hawkins, posted that he was “shocked and disappointed” after being told that the band had “decided ‘to go in a different direction with their drummer’” after two years behind the kit.
Josh Freese and Dave Grohl, performing as The Churnups, play on the Pyramid Stage on day 3 of Glastonbury 2023. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty
Given the public nature of his announcement, it’s clearly a tricky topic. Grohl and Mendel choose their words carefully.
“A drummer’s playing is based on feel,” Grohl says. “That’s all drumming is: feel. It’s hard to define when you’re playing with someone and it feels ‘right’, or when you’re playing with someone who feels ‘really good’, and then you’re playing with someone and it feels ‘f**king amazing’.
“It’s personality, it’s your connection, your rhythm that you have together. It’s just a combination, or a recipe – when you’re cooking something and it says, ‘Salt and pepper to taste’ at the end of the recipe; that’s defined by you.
“Like the chef Marco Pierre White; if you ever watch him make something – which I’m obsessed with; like, the guy’s a f**king a hero of mine – he talks about ‘feel’ the whole time. It’s the way he moves a pan, the way he sets it aside, the way he pulls it up, the way he’ll season things. So he knows – and f**k, man, if he knows, then it must be good. So we know what feels best for our band.”
These are measured responses to the crises that have engulfed the band in recent times. While irritation and indignation are audible at various points on Your Favorite Toy, there is no obvious target for them.
I try to love everyone, because I think that’s what you’re supposed to do – and I do
— Dave Grohl
Foo Fighters have never written an outwardly political song, but they have staked their flag by forbidding Donald Trump to use their song My Hero on his campaign trail for the US presidency in 2024; they subsequently donated royalties from its usage to the campaign of Kamala Harris, his Democratic Party rival.
Isn’t it difficult not to feel angry and disillusioned about the state of the world, and particularly their homeland?
“Yeah, we’re getting old,” Grohl says. “f**king Neil Young is angrier than ever – jeez, Louise. But, yeah, of course. It’s hard not to feel political living in America, where we’re deeply divided. And there’s injustice, and there’s so much hate and fear, and it’s such a drag.”
He tugs at his beard.
“I try to love everyone, because I think that’s what you’re supposed to do – and I do. But there needs to be change in that direction, and it’s been hard to find in the States.”
Foo Fighters have officially been a going concern for more than three decades. In 2021, Grohl told The Irish Times that the prospect of the band ending “would be like your grandparents getting a divorce … It just makes no sense.”
Each Foo Fighters album, Grohl says, represents a specific period in their lives. Photograph: Elizabeth Miranda
Still, becoming one of the biggest bands on the planet has its downsides, too. Is there anything they particularly miss about those early days, when the weight of expectation was perhaps not as cumbersome or difficult to navigate?
“I miss the hair that used to be right about here,” Grohl quips, gesturing to the crown of his head. “But it’s an interesting question. I don’t look back and miss it, but …”
He thinks for a moment.
“There’s a thing when you’re first starting out where it’s scrappy. You’re travelling in a van, you’re staying in two-star hotels and there’s not as much logistical support for what you’re doing – and it opens up more windows for weird shit to happen. Most of our good stories are from the first five to 10 years of the band, because after that …”
He trails off, but Mendel picks up the thread.
“It gets really dark,” he says, smirking. “You’re just together in more wacky situations. And there’s a lot of good memories from that.”
“It’s funny,” Grohl says contemplatively, “because my daughter Violet is embarking on the beginning of her musical career. She made this incredible record” – Be Sweet to Me, to be released at the end of May – “and she is legitimately incredibly talented. She has perfect pitch; she can learn an instrument in a day.
Dave Grohl with his daughter Violet and Jordyn Blum. Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
“She’s really excited for this to begin, and I’m completely uninvolved. I don’t want to smother her with old-man dad advice. But I really hope that she gets those same experiences that we had.
“I hope she winds up sleeping on someone’s couch in a sleeping bag. I hope that she winds up in a van with six people in a trailer, late for load-in and they’ve blown a tyre and their cell phone’s out.”
He looks around, gesturing at our five-star surroundings.
“It’s those early experiences that really do lay a foundation for the appreciation of this.”
Do Foo Fighters have another 30 years in them? Will they become The Rolling Stones of their era? Grohl and Mendel both momentarily wince at the idea.
“Thirty years? That’s 87 for me,” the singer says, frowning slightly. “I can’t imagine stopping, that’s for sure. But we’ll have AI at that point – we’ll be holograms.”
He shakes his head before perking up again.
“Have you seen the Abba show?” he says about Voyage. “Unbelievable. I walked out of there just thinking, f**king amazing.”
Grohl throws his palms up.
“So we have something to look forward to, at least. Holograms.”
Your Favorite Toy is released by Roswell/RCA on Friday, April 24th