(Credits: Far Out / Raphael Pour-Hashemi)
Thu 27 November 2025 18:45, UK
Dave Grohl has never hidden his enthusiasm for other musicians. Rather than adhering to the unphased musician act, and abstaining from crediting his peers as equally as brilliant as him, you’re likely to find him amongst other music fans, excitedly sharing his love for any given musician’s work.
When Grohl is grinning from ear to ear, talking about his next favourite band, it’s almost easy to forget this man was the beating heart of two truly iconic bands. Be it sitting at the drum kit for Nirvana’s game-changing grunge discography or leading Foo Fighters into the immortal realms of stadium rock, Grohl has always had his finger on the pulse of greatness.
But he’s not afraid to share the recipe that got him there. No, he’s regularly cited bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Hüsker Dü as the pillars of his influence, with a whole host of lesser-known musicians existing under that. In fact, it’s a wonder anybody listens to his music at all, given just how eager he is to divert you to the work of others.
Through that, he’s rather unsurprisingly found himself in the studio or on stage with artists he admires. Seizing the opportunity to collaborate and applying his skills as a multi-instrumentalist, he’s injected his own contribution to other musicians’ projects. While some of the most notable would be sharing the stage with Led Zeppelin and laying down the drum tracks for Tenacious D, there are more understated credits to his name.
On Cat Power’s 2003 album You Are Free, Grohl’s work could be found in the rhythm sections of songs ‘Speak For Me’, ‘He War’, and ‘Shaking Paper’. His desire to be involved with the project came from a place of long-standing admiration, with one of Grohl’s most treasured songs coming from her 1998 album Moon Pix.
Grohl cited the track ‘Cross Bones Style’ as one of his favourites of all time, in a truly elaborate style in keeping with his persona. He said, “The first half of the mix-tape is foreplay. It’s like meeting a stranger in a bar after you’ve had one too many shots, and you want your first kiss to be crazy and passionate and sloppy, and then you kinda slow down and start to feel it. The sound of Chan Marshall’s voice is the most satisfying orgasm I could possibly imagine.”
It’s quite the description for a song that unveils its sensuality with delicacy rather than his self-prescribed sloppiness. But rather, oddly, you can understand exactly what Grohl means in terms of the track. But it isn’t the only song from Moon Pix that he has an affinity for.
He also said, “One of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard is Cat Power’s ‘The Colour And The Kids’ from her album Moon Pix. That song is so heart-wrenchingly beautiful and romantic – it makes me want to kidnap her and run away and hide forever.”
For those who haven’t listened to the record, Grohl’s truly bizarre way of describing both songs that sits somewhere between the heartfelt and disturbed is actually as good an endorsement as any. Because it perfectly captures the beautiful intrigue that surrounds the record.
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