(Credits: Far Out / Raphael Pour-Hashemi)
Mon 2 March 2026 7:00, UK
For Dave Grohl, music was never about trying to win trophies whenever you walked out of the studio.
It’s one thing to make the best music you can whenever you start writing, but once the music starts becoming a sport, you start losing a piece of that musical core that a lot of people love to hear. And while Grohl did have a lot of love for all his records, he was thankful to get recognised for the more sentimental moments whenever he could.
Then again, Grohl did have a bit of a chip on his shoulder when he first won Grammys. Kurt Cobain probably wouldn’t have had time to care about whether or not Nirvana won any high accolades, but as far as Grohl was concerned, Foo Fighters were the kind of band that stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the more extravagant people that turn up at the Grammys every single year. So when they first got recognised, it was almost like a subtle middle finger to some of the bigwigs.
I mean, if you think about it, how many Grammy-award-winning albums from that time could have been recorded out of a basement studio? This was still the age of extravagance, and when There Is Nothing Left to Lose came out, Grohl was more proud of the fact that he was able to make this homemade record that went to the top of the charts rather than rely on the countless songwriters who went in to make one record.
So when he finally got the chance to work with his dream guests for Sound City, he wanted it to be a lot more raw than what he had heard on those “team effort” style records. The idea of getting everyone from Rick Springfield to Corey Taylor to Stevie Nicks to Lee Ving on the same record is a bit surreal to take in all at once, but since this was a celebration of the studio that made him, Grohl knew a few special people needed to be accounted for.
After all, Nirvana cut their masterpiece in the studio, and when Krist Novoselic showed up to play on the record, getting Paul McCartney on the track was an absolute piece of magic. Macca may not have been everyone’s first choice to join a grunge supergroup, but after getting out a cigar box guitar for ‘Cut Me Some Slack’, he got back in touch with the kind of screams that had been left over from the days of ‘Helter Skelter’.
Grohl could have cared less whether the song won any awards, but once he got decorated by the Grammys, it meant more than any other Grammy that he already owned, saying, “I’d probably have to say the one that me, Novoselic, and Pat won with Paul McCartney for ‘Cut Me Some Slack.’ Three of my favorite people all together won one Grammy, that was pretty cool.” It may have been surreal for Grohl, but it was ever more surreal for everyone watching it go down.
Think about it for a second. Here are two-thirds of the band that set the music world on fire back in 1991, and the fact that they’re playing with another legend that happened to be a guitar-toting frontman playing left-handed was like watching McCartney anoint them as rock and roll gods live onstage.
Grohl has gone through more than his fair share of ‘pinch me’ moments throughout his career, but for all of the starry-eyed looks he must have given McCartney, it was never about trying to drool over the Beatle in the room. It was about having fun, and being able to make this kind of music among his friends is something that Grohl was never going to take for granted for the rest of his life.