(Credits: Far Out / Andrew Stuart)
Wed 1 October 2025 16:15, UK
Like most popular music icons of the latter half of the 20th century, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl isn’t a classically trained musician.
Beginning his musical odyssey as a drummer, he would spend hours on end “in my bedroom practising alone to Beatles records (…) battering my drums until my hands literally bled,” Grohl remembered in his book Dave’s True Stories.
Becoming a drummer isn’t really often something you set out to do necessarily. Guitarists are always dreaming of being in the limelight, singers too. But to be a drummer is to be connected ot an innate rhythm that might well be honed but must first originate from within the person taking on the sticks. Grohl was one such man born to play the drums.
Following the death of his Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain in 1994, Grohl decided to turn the page and found another highly successful chapter with Foo Fighters. Until this point, Gohl was predominantly a drummer, but as the leader of Foo Fighters, he began to try his hand at guitar and vocals.
Guitar in hand and voice at the ready, Grohl needed something to strum and some words to sing. With such little experience in songwriting, the success that Foo Fighters eventually attained was by no means handed to them on a nepotistic plate.
In 1995, Foo Fighters released their eponymous debut album, a collection mainly comprising of solo endeavours that Grohl recorded as demos. Foo Fighters was released to promising critical acclaim and garnered respectable commercial attention, but nothing on the level Grohl had grown accustomed to with Nirvana.
Dave Grohl on stage with Foo Fighters. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Following this debut, Grohl shifted the band’s lineup as he struggled to get to grips with songwriting in preparation for a more refined second album. When 1996 rolled around, however, Grohl’s personal life had fallen into dire straits, compounding his lack of creative energy. Following a bitter divorce from his former wife, Jennifer Youngblood, Grohl had resorted to couch surfing for a period while he rearranged his life.
Toward the end of the year, Grohl’s luck began to change after finding new love in Louise Post, the vocalist and guitarist of the band Veruca Salt. Inspired by his new romantic muse, Grohl stumbled upon the lyrics for ‘Everlong’ over the Christmas period in 1996. He told Kerrang in 2006: “That song’s about a girl that I’d fallen in love with, and it was basically about being connected to someone so much, that not only do you love them physically and spiritually, but when you sing along with them you harmonise perfectly.”
‘Everlong’ marked a change in the tide for Grohl as he proved himself to be a competent songwriter. The song is often cited as Grohl’s greatest achievement and even boasts the endorsement of Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan.
Speaking to Uncut, Grohl recalled a conversation he once had with Dylan while on tour: “We talked for a little bit, and he thanked us for being on the tour and then he said, ‘Man, what’s that song you guys got? The only thing I’ll ever ask of you is to promise not to stop when I say when.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s ‘Everlong’. He said, ‘That’s a great song, man, I should do that song.’”
However, despite Dylan’s endorsement, Grohl’s favourite of his own creations was ‘These Days’, released in 2011 as one of six singles on Wasting Light. The lead Foo Fighter told Q Magazine that it “might be the best song I’ve ever written.”
There are probably a whole host of songs that have been bestowed such a title by Grohl throughout the years. The nature of being a songwriter is that you often feel your latest scribble is the best one you ever committed to paper. But this track has a far deeper connection with Grohl that still leaves him dabbing away the tears whenever he performs it.
The poignant and explosive track teems with loss and heartbreak as Grohl hits out at naive optimism: “It’s easy for you to say, your heart has never been broken”. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2015, Grohl said ‘These Days’ is one of the most memorable songs in his catalogue. “Every night I sing it, I still get choked up,” he added.
As a performer, there is a necessary feeling of detachment one must employ when playing your songs. Some tracks will be about subjects that still hurt you, or even make you laugh. For a track to still leave Grohl crying every night when he performs it is something really special and might just confirm that, indeed, it truly is the best he has ever written.
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