Dave Grohl
Dave Grohl on stage with the Foo Fighters]]
David Eric Grohl (born January 14, 1969, in Warren, Ohio) is a rock musician, who was the drummer of the grunge band Nirvana from 1990 until the band split up in 1994 after frontman Kurt Cobain's death. He formed the Foo Fighters in 1995.
Grohl began his music career in the 1980s as the drummer for several Washington, DC area bands, most notably the punk rock band Scream.
Early life
When Grohl was a young child, his family relocated from Ohio to Washington, DC. Three years later, his parents divorced, and Grohl grew up living with his mother.At the age of twelve, Grohl began tinkering with the guitar. He started with lessons, but tired of them, and began to play in bands with friends. A year later, a summer stay at his cousin's house spawned Grohl's interest in punk rock. Grohl's cousin Tracy took him to numerous punk shows during that summer, and Grohl returned to DC a convert.While attending Thomas Jefferson High School, Grohl played guitar in a punk band called Freak Baby. Eventually, Grohl became frustrated with their drummer's playing, and began to experiment with playing drums himself. When the band subsequently tossed its bass player, the band's drummer switched to bass and Grohl took over on drums.Over the next several years, Grohl played in several local bands, including a hardcore punk band called Mission Impossible and a hardcore/post-punk band called Dain Bramage. During his developing years as a drummer, Grohl cited John Bonham as his greatest influence, and eventually had Bonham's three-circle logo tattooed on his arm. At the age of sixteen, Grohl scored an audition with local DC favorites Scream. To his surprise, the band asked him to join. After waffling for a brief period, Grohl accepted the offer. Not long after, he dropped out of high school to play drums full-time. Over the next four years, Grohl toured extensively with the band, recording a couple of live albums and one studio album, ''Fumble'', on which Grohl penned and sang vocals on the song "Gods Look Down".While playing in Scream, Grohl became a fan of The Melvins and eventually befriended the band. During a 1990 tour stop on the west coast, The Melvins' Buzz Osborne took a couple of his friends, Kurt Cobain and Chris Novoselic, to see the band. A few months later, Scream unexpectedly disbanded following the departure of its bass player, and Grohl placed a phone call to Osborne for advice. Knowing how much Cobain and Novoselic liked Grohl's drumming, Osborne gave Grohl Novoselic's phone number. Novoselic invited Grohl up to Seattle, where Grohl attended Nirvana's infamous show at the Motor Sports Garage, the one Nirvana show that featured Dan Peters on drums. (Grohl admitted to ''Rolling Stone'' in 2005 that he spent most of Nirvana's set outside talking to a friend.) Grohl subsequently auditioned for the band, and soon joined the band full-time.
Nirvana
At the time that Grohl joined Nirvana, the band had already recorded several demos for what would be the follow-up to their debut album ''Bleach'', having spent time recording with producer Butch Vig in Wisconsin. Initially, the plans were to release the album on Sub Pop, but the band found itself receiving a great deal of major label interest based on the demos. Grohl spent the initial months with Nirvana travelling to various major labels as the band shopped for a deal, eventually signing with DGC Records. In the spring of 1991, the band entered the studio to record the album.Upon its release, ''Nevermind'' exceeded all expectations and became a massive success, catapulting the band to worldwide stardom. At the same time, Grohl found himself fighting with his status in the band. While his drumming style was a significant element in the band's success, Grohl saw himself as just another in a long line of drummers. In his mind, Nirvana was the band that recorded ''Bleach''; his arrival had altered that sound dramatically, and, as he saw it, not necessarily in a positive way. Though Grohl had been writing songs for several years, he declined to introduce his songs to the band for fear of damaging the band's chemistry. Instead, Grohl compiled his songs and recorded them himself, releasing a cassette demo called ''Pocketwatch'' in 1992 on indie label Simple Machines. Rather than using his own name, Grohl released the cassette under the pseudonym "Late!".In the later years of Nirvana, Grohl's songwriting contributions increased. In Grohl's initial months in Seattle, Cobain overheard him working on a song called "Color Pictures of a Marigold", and the two ended up jamming on it. During the sessions for ''In Utero'', the band decided to record the song, and released it as a b-side on the "Heart Shaped Box" single, titled simply "Marigold". Earlier, as the band worked on new material for ''In Utero'', Grohl contributed the main guitar riff for what ended up becoming "Scentless Apprentice". Cobain conceded in a late 1993 MTV interview that he initially thought the riff was "kind of boneheaded", but was gratified at how the song developed (a process captured in part in a demo on the Nirvana box set ''With the Lights Out''). Cobain noted that he was excited at the possibility of having Novoselic and Grohl contribute more to the band's songwriting.Prior to their 1994 European tour, the band decided to schedule session time at Robert Lang's Studio in Seattle to work on demos. For most of the three-day session, Cobain was absent, so Novoselic and Grohl worked on demos of their own songs. The duo completed several of Grohl's, including future Foo Fighters songs "Exhausted", "Big Me", "February Stars", and "Butterflies". On the third day of the session, Cobain finally arrived, and the band recorded a demo of a song later named "You Know You're Right". It was the band's final recording.