Note that I said Dave Grohl and not the Foo Fighters. The Foos are just fine; they’ve been doing their thing for decades and they have their place in the current times as well as in music history. There’s one of them, and that’s enough. There was a point in time, in the early to mid 2000s where it felt like the Foos were the only band in the world playing rock music. They were the ‘token’ rock band on what seemed like every award show. It was a dark time for the rebellion.
An interesting question might be: Why were the Foos at every award show? The answer is kinda the point of this post. The Foos were at every award show because Grohl is a hustler. I mean that in the best sense of the word. Grohl is seemingly always out there on the hustle, trying new things and taking chances.
Note that I said Dave Grohl and not the Foo Fighters. The Foos are just fine; they’ve been doing their thing for decades and they have their place in the current times as well as in music history. There’s one of them, and that’s enough. There was a point in time, in the early to mid 2000s where it felt like the Foos were the only band in the world playing rock music. They were the ‘token’ rock band on what seemed like every award show. It was a dark time for the rebellion.
An interesting question might be: Why were the Foos at every award show? The answer is kinda the point of this post. The Foos were at every award show because Grohl is a hustler. I mean that in the best sense of the word. Grohl is seemingly always out there on the hustle, trying new things and taking chances. I for one can appreciate that, and I think that music could use a lot more of that. In an era where many of the most popular acts can’t sing or play, and often feel like they need to ask their manager if they can take a dump, Grohl is out there trying to do things he thinks are cool with people he wants to do them with.
Hey Zac, let’s go do War Pigs on Letterman. Let’s make a movie about a sound board that will let me jam with Paul McCartney. I’m going to make an album by going to studios all over the country and make a TV show about it on HBO. My management and myself are going to hustle around and find and put up the money and make our vision come true. Love it.
Grohl is the kid in the cafeteria at school who always knows where the best party is that night. He knows everyone at school and everyone knows him. He’s taken that identity out of the school cafeteria and now lives it in ‘showbiz’.
What would it be like if rock music had one more like Grohl? One more dude (or woman) who was in a big band and had influence reached out with the ‘Hey Bro, let’s collab!’ mindset and do cool stuff. It likely would have an exponential effect on the amount of collabin’ that got done and more really neat things would happen.
Probably the closest thing we have these days other than Grohl is Lady Gaga, who is currently on tour with Tony Bennett, singing Jazz, which is both cool and not something many pop star managers would advise their pop star to do. Points for Gaga, who I’m a huge fan of — especially in terms of how she positions herself, manages her image and identity as an artist, and takes chances.
But I’m here to talk about Rock music, and in Rock, all I see is Grohl doing this – at least on a global scale. Is it somehow Grohl’s job to carry this mantle alone? He’ll be 46 in January, he has three kids, and at some point, he may want to slow down a little.
By the way, as a former rock manager, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Grohl’s management. Silva, Cutclife, Skolnik have all been plying their craft very well for decades and are a huge part of where Grohl and the Foos are today. Well done.
I’ll leave you with my Grohl story. Everyone who was in the rock music business has one. I briefly worked with a very aggro band called Swift in the late 90’s/early 2000s. This was the height of the screamy-metal-guttural-vocals thing, and I almost got sucked in. I put this band in at Cole Rehearsal in Hollywood for a week to see what they were like as people, and to find out if the music had any legs. They were in one of the little rooms, playing their hearts out in a very aggressive and guttural fashion. It was aggro-rock to say the least. When the band were on a break, Grohl walks in with a couple coffee cups. It’s only me and him in the room (we had earlier briefly discussed that I had managed a band called Eleven that he was close to/a fan of). Dave sets the coffee cups down, looks at me and says “It sounds like these guys could use some decaf” laughs and leaves. Well played.
For years it felt like the Foos were the only band in rock. It sometimes feels like Grohl is the only guy out there really trying to make ‘outside the box’ things happen for him and his band. If you know of another person in aprominent influential act trying to make cool things happen, l’d like to hear about it. Thanks for reading.
