WHEN GROHL was six years old he lit up his first cigarette, a half-smoked butt filched from an ashtray outside a local shop. The year after that, his mother, Virginia, an English teacher, and father, James, a political journalist, got divorced, "It didn't feel strange. I was probably too young to feel traumatised by it. I remember there was some Nirvana book that glorified my parents' divorce as if it were my inspiration to play music. Completely untrue. The fucking Beatles were the inspiration for me to play music."
Growing up in the Washington DC suburb of Springfeild, Virginia, Grohl lived in a tiny house with his sister and his mother.
"Sometimes she held down three or four jobs at once to make ends meet," he remembers.
"There were times when we'd have scrambled egg sandwiches for dinner, so you learn to appreciate the things that you have, but it was fine. I never felt like I didn't have enough."
At school Grohl was a "horrible student", but got on well with everyone and was a skilled goalkeeper for the football and lacrosse teams. He also enjoyed hunting expeditions to take pot-shots at pheasant and duck. However, at 13 his interest in outdoor pursuits came to a sudden end during a summer holiday to visit relatives in Illinois, when his cousin, Tracey, turned him on to punk. "She doesn't listen to that stuff anymore," he says. "What does she like? Bad music. Maroon 5. And she was friends with the Misfits!"
Soundtracked by Bad Brains, Minor threat and Led Zeppelin, Grohl embraced a new, more sedentary lifestyle that involved smoking a lot of marijuana. His father, concerned with that young David was becoming a "bad kid", sent him to therapy. "At that time it wasn't called a therapist, it was more of a counsellor,' says Grohl. "I think it was maybe two sessions and don't remember much about it, except getting dressed up to go. Parents get worried when they divorce and then a child starts listening to Slayer and they find the bong in the bedroom."
You've had therapy since then, haven't you?
Yeah. When I lived in Seattle, my ex-wife and I were going to counselling before we got married, but we went to separate therapist. The idea was...this is ridiculous, I've never told anybody this...the ideas was that I would go for mine, she would go to hers and then we would all meet and talk about things.
Did it work?
Well. I evidently not [laughs]. And so I was seeing that therapist when Kurt died, and fortunately I had already established a relationship with this person so I had someone to talk to when that happened.
Have you been recently?
Like in the last two years, year and a half, something like that. I believe in having someone with an objective opinion who's trained in "the ways of the mind" to talk to. I've never been on medication or anything like that and I've never been overly depressed, but there have been times when I need advice from someone else. I don't ask for advice that often.
What made you want to go last time?
Just being overwhelmed by everything, with the amount of work or growing older or life changes or band changes, you know? You go, you talk to the person once a week for a couple of months and it helps for some reason. If you're a junkie you go to a drug counsellor. If you're a rock musician what do you do?
Drink whisky and listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd?
Whisky and Lynyrd Skynyrd works well too, but that's just a Band-Aid. It's temporary. I tell you, it's not often that I fall into a place where I'm really fucking bummed out, but every once in a while I'll feel like, What the fuck am I doing?
AT 36 years old, Grohl still enjoys performing but the madness of touring is beginning to lose its appeal. Last month was spent travelling around the States before heading to Australia this month and, finally, doing six UK shows - including one at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium with Oasis - just before Christmas.
"That shit gets hard. Half of my life I've spent on the road, since I was 18," Grohl sighs.
" I have to leave on Tuesday, and I don't want to. I won't be home for all of October. I have a beautiful wife...I don't need to work another day in my life, but I love playing."
Grohl has always been modest about his role in Nirvana. " I mean, I was the sixth drummer or whatever it was," he says. Steve Albini, who produced the band's 1993 album, In Utero, remembers his contribution a little differently. "Probably the highlight was watching Dave Grohl play the drums. He's also a very pleasant, very goofy guy to be around."
In recent years the drum stool has become a retreat for Grohl, somewhere he doesn't have to deal with the pressures of being the man in charge. In early 2001, weary form an exhaustive promotional schedule for the Foo fighters' 1999 album There Is Nothing Left To Lose, he joined his old school friends Queens Of The Stone Age to play on their Songs For The Death record, released the following year.
Grohl regrouped with the Foo Fighters for a summer tour of the UK. However, the trip ground to a halt in August when Hawkins was hospitalised for a painkiller overdose. Hawkins is unequivocal on the matter of Grohl's support. "He was there more than anybody, 100 per cent. We were strictly on a human level. Really and truly, we are like best friends. That was what was important, not the fucking band."
Despite this bump in the road, in 2002 the band pressed the ahead with recording their fourth album, One By One. Unsatisfied with the results, Grohl decided to scrap the unmixed tracks, picked up his sticks and went out on tour with Queens Of The Stone Age.
"I thought he was going to break the band up," says Shiflett. "I think everybody did."
"He would rather have been playing drums with Queens than be in the Foo Fighters at that time, and I would rather have been anywhere else than in a room with Dave," says Hawkins.
"Communication within the band has got a lot better," Shiflett continues. "Obviously Foo Fighters is Dave's thing, but he's not the kind of guy that wants to be anybody's boss. Everyone respects that and doesn't put him in a position where he has to be a dick about anything."
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