Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters Ch. 5: Profiles (cont.) & Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, pp. 622–626 CARL WILKINSON · In this profile, Carl Wilkinson provides a rich verbal portrait of rock musician Dave Grohl, who was the drummer in the “seminal grunge band Nirvana” and continues to lead the successful band the Foo Fighters. He also shows how contemporary popular music is changing in response to Internet file sharing. Notice how Wilkinson combines research with rich details about Grohl, his studio, and Grohl’s own words to help readers understand what makes Grohl “the perfect rock star.” A group of record company executives, sitting down to sketch the perfect rock star, may well come up with someone a little like Dave Grohl. He has the look—long, thick black hair; he has the talent—he plays the drums, guitar and piano, he sings and he writes his own songs; and, above all, he has both pedigree and credibility. In the early 1990s, as drummer with seminal grunge band Nirvana, Grohl helped change the face of popular music. Today, as lead singer with stadium-filling rock giants Foo Fighters, he is a multi-millionaire who has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, won six Grammy awards and is president of his own record label. Alongside Foo Fighters he has a number of side projects (including supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones); a documentary about his band shot by Oscar-winning director James Moll was released last month and his seventh album, Wasting Light, is out on Monday. Now 42, Grohl—and his brand of rock ‘n’ roll—has grown up, had kids and settled down. How did a man who was just a drummer and who never intended to make money from music end up as one of the biggest and wealthiest rock stars of the decade, succeeding in the face of a record industry in crisis? We meet at Studio 606, the 8,000 sq ft recording space he built in 2005 in the Northridge area of Los Angeles. Outside, the Californian spring sunshine throws stark shadows across a neighbourhood that estate agents would describe euphemistically as “mixed”; from inside this large utilitarian building, with its tinted windows, the blue sky looks almost overcast. 5 Grohl, who is tall, lean and has grown into his slightly goofy looks, sets down the keys to his decidedly un-rock ‘n’ roll grey BMW estate, tucks his shoulder-length hair behind his ear and flips the lid on his laptop. “Sorry,” he beams. “I’ve just got to check my e-mail. I want to see if my daughter got into private school.” Grohl married Jordyn Blum in 2003, and they have two daughters, Violet Maye, aged four, and Harper Willow, one. The upstairs lounge looks like a bachelor pad: there’s a fridge, jukebox and widescreen TV with an eclectic selection of boxsets: The Office, ACDC and Bon Jovi gigs, and a tape of the Make-up and Effects trade show 1997. Scattered across the purple sofa are cushions covered with old band T-shirts (Slayer, The Police, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Led Zeppe.

1. Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters
Ch. 5: Profiles (cont.) & Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, pp.
622–626
CARL WILKINSON
· In this profile, Carl Wilkinson provides a rich verbal portrait
of rock musician Dave Grohl, who was the drummer in the
“seminal grunge band Nirvana” and continues to lead the
successful band the Foo Fighters. He also shows how
contemporary popular music is changing in response to Internet
file sharing. Notice how Wilkinson combines research with rich
details about Grohl, his studio, and Grohl’s own words to help
readers understand what makes Grohl “the perfect rock star.”
A group of record company executives, sitting down to sketch
the perfect rock star, may well come up with someone a little
like Dave Grohl. He has the look—long, thick black hair; he has
the talent—he plays the drums, guitar and piano, he sings and
he writes his own songs; and, above all, he has both pedigree
and credibility.
In the early 1990s, as drummer with seminal grunge band
Nirvana, Grohl helped change the face of popular music. Today,
as lead singer with stadium-filling rock giants Foo Fighters, he
is a multi-millionaire who has sold more than 15 million albums
worldwide, won six Grammy awards and is president of his own
record label. Alongside Foo Fighters he has a number of side
projects (including supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, with
Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones); a documentary about his band
shot by Oscar-winning director James Moll was released last
month and his seventh album, Wasting Light, is out on Monday.
Now 42, Grohl—and his brand of rock ‘n’ roll—has grown up,
had kids and settled down.
How did a man who was just a drummer and who never intended
to make money from music end up as one of the biggest and
wealthiest rock stars of the decade, succeeding in the face of a
record industry in crisis?
We meet at Studio 606, the 8,000 sq ft recording space he built

2. in 2005 in the Northridge area of Los Angeles. Outside, the
Californian spring sunshine throws stark shadows across a
neighbourhood that estate agents would describe
euphemistically as “mixed”; from inside this large utilitarian
building, with its tinted windows, the blue sky looks almost
overcast.
5
Grohl, who is tall, lean and has grown into his slightly goofy
looks, sets down the keys to his decidedly un-rock ‘n’ roll grey
BMW estate, tucks his shoulder-length hair behind his ear and
flips the lid on his laptop. “Sorry,” he beams. “I’ve just got to
check my e-mail. I want to see if my daughter got into private
school.” Grohl married Jordyn Blum in 2003, and they have two
daughters, Violet Maye, aged four, and Harper Willow, one.
The upstairs lounge looks like a bachelor pad: there’s a fridge,
jukebox and widescreen TV with an eclectic selection of
boxsets: The Office, ACDC and Bon Jovi gigs, and a tape of the
Make-up and Effects trade show 1997. Scattered across the
purple sofa are cushions covered with old band T-shirts (Slayer,
The Police, Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Led Zeppelin) made by
Grohl’s mother. “She called up and said ‘David, what do you
want me to do with those T-shirts in the attic?’,” says Grohl in a
falsetto.
Downstairs, a vast recording studio complete with Persian rugs
and a grand piano in the corner leads on to a warehouse filled
with carefully labelled guitar cases, drums and assorted
equipment. Among the platinum records, framed posters and
photographs hanging in the corridor outside the soundproofed
control room where we adjourn to talk is the iconic cover of
Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind, which celebrates its 20th
anniversary in September.
Nevermind (and Nirvana) is both a gift and a curse to Grohl
now. “For 16 years I’ve had to balance these two things: my
love and respect of Nirvana and my love and respect of the Foo
Fighters.” He lifts first his right hand then his left and balances
the two, the large feathers tattooed on both forearms gently

3. rising and falling. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Nirvana,
there’s no question. But I don’t know if I’d be alive if it wasn’t
for the Foo Fighters. I try to keep them at a balance that is very
respectful of each other.”
Despite Grohl’s desire to move on, the legacy of Nirvana’s
groundbreaking album still haunts him, and for good reason.
Nevermind changed popular culture. Until the release of that
album in 1991, music was dominated by pop giants such as
Madonna, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. The
alternative music scene was just that: lo-fi, raw-sounding and
based on a punk DIY ethos that came to be known as grunge.
10
“Grunge emerged from the Pacific northwest,” explains the
writer Mark Yarm, whose book Everybody Loves Our Town: A
History of Grunge will be published in September to coincide
with Nevermind’s anniversary. “It’s unclear who coined the
term, but it came to mean guitar bands who had a certain
unkempt style and usually came from Seattle. It was a
movement that was always supposed to transcend the cash.
Success was viewed very warily. People like Nirvana’s lead
singer Kurt Cobain were resistant to success, yet very much
sought it at the same time.”
Grohl, who never imagined himself becoming a doctor, lawyer
or writer, recorded his first album at 15 in a studio near his
parents’ house in Springfield, Virginia—a suburb of
Washington, DC. “The intention wasn’t to become U2, it was to
satisfy that need to accomplish something outside of the
mainstream system,” he says.
That early anti-commercial intent symbolised the ethos of the
alternative music scene. In 1990, Grohl became the drummer for
Seattle-based band Nirvana, which had been formed by singer
Kurt Cobain and bass player Krist Novoselic in 1987. Nirvana
had already released a debut album, Bleach (1989), and the
threepiece—Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl—toured small venues
in a tiny van. It was a love of music that fuelled them, not the
desire to become rich, famous rock stars.

4. All that changed when they teamed up with producer Butch Vig
on their second album Nevermind.Where Bleach was a bona fide
indie album released on the tiny Seattle-based Sub Pop label to
which the band signed for an initial $600 advance, Nevermind
was released by Geffen, a label owned by the Universal Music
Group that was also home to the band’s idols Sonic Youth.
“Sonic Youth’s major label debut came out in 1990 and sold
about 200,000 copies, which was considered a huge number in
indie-rock circles back then,” explains Yarm. “It was just
inconceivable that another ‘weird’, underground band like
Nirvana, who really looked up to Sonic Youth, could sell
millions and millions of albums.” Yet Nevermind, which was
expected to sell around 200,000 copies, exploded.
15
“Many people point to the week in January 1992 when Nirvana
knocked Michael Jackson—the King of Pop—off the top of the
American charts as the moment alternative music truly went
mainstream,” says Yarm. To date, Nevermind has sold more
than 26 million copies worldwide.
The album marked a sea-change in popular culture: it was the
birth of a sound, a fashion and a lifestyle that was as big as
punk or the swinging 60s before it. In the same year as
Nevermind was released, Douglas Coupland published his
famous novel Generation X and the theme tune for this new
generation was Nirvana’s breakthrough single “Smells Like
Teen Spirit”—a raw, angry rallying cry that touched a nerve
around the world.
Yet, for Grohl—at least initially—little changed. “It was just as
much a shock to us as it was to everybody else. I think we were
the last ones to believe it. Our world wasn’t changing within all
of that. We had a gold record and we were still touring in a van.
And then it went platinum—we sold a million records—and we
were still touring in a van; I was still sharing a room with Kurt
when we had a platinum record. Even after we sold 10 million
albums I was still living in a back room at my friend’s house
with a futon and a lamp.” He does remember being sent his first

5. credit card though. Never a big spender, he immediately rushed
to his local Benihana, the chain of Japanese restaurants.
Thanks to Nirvana’s success, record companies descended on
Seattle, snapping up any band they could find. “It was a feeding
frenzy,” says Yarm. “One executive told me that all the flights
from LA to Seattle were constantly booked. If one of those
planes had gone down, it would have destroyed the music
industry.”
After the stratospheric success of Nevermind, Nirvana released
just one further studio album, 1993’s In Utero, and toured to
breaking point. In 1994, lead singer Kurt Cobain, struggling
with the pressure, was flown home to the US from Rome after
taking an overdose during the European leg of the band’s tour.
On April 8 1994, Cobain was found dead at the house in Seattle
he shared with his wife Courtney Love and their daughter
Frances Bean. He had taken a heroin overdose and shot himself.
His suicide shook the music world to its core, made global
headlines and, in the eyes of many devastated fans, established
Cobain as a tragic-romantic figure in the mould of Janis Joplin,
Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix. He was 27 years old.
20
In the months after Cobain’s death, Grohl couldn’t bring
himself to play music. “After Nirvana ended in April 1994, I
didn’t really do much that year,” explains Grohl. It wasn’t until
October 1994 that he felt ready to go back into the studio. “I
didn’t have a plan or any major career aspiration,” he says. “I
just felt like I needed to do something.”
Over the course of five days, he recorded 13–14 of his songs in
a small studio near his house, playing all the instruments and
singing every song. Grohl distributed 100 copies of the
recording to friends and music industry insiders and, reticent to
step into the limelight so soon after Nirvana, he called the
project Foo Fighters, the second world war term for an
unidentified flying object, as it “sounded more like a band”.
Those recordings, which cost Grohl around $5,000, became Foo
Fighters’ self-titled debut album. Released in 1995, it

6. established Grohl as one of the biggest rock musicians in the
world.
It’s practically unheard of for a drummer to make it as a lead
singer—perhaps the only other famous example is Phil Collins,
who forged a solo career after his time in Genesis. Yet Collins
is not playing stadium gigs 20 years on. When almost every
other band of his generation has fallen by the wayside, what is
it about Grohl and Foo Fighters that still resonates?
“Their music is no nonsense, blue-collar everyman music,”
explains Butch Vig, who has produced the band’s new album
Wasting Light. “I think that people feel like they know the
band.
They can relate to their songs, but they can also relate to them
as individuals.” Today, after some personnel changes over the
years, Foo Fighters consist of drummer Taylor Hawkins,
guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear, bass player Nate Mendel
and Grohl. They are a friendly, close-knit five-piece, who share
jokes nonstop and banter about moments on tour. Over the
course of 16 years and seven studio albums, the band has honed
a particular brand of emotionally charged rock that has
transcended their early grunge influences. Grohl writes
melodies with the energy of punk rock that form an enviable
greatest hits package guaranteed to fill any stadium in the world
(in June 2008 the band played two consecutive shows at the
90,000-capacity Wembley Stadium).
The band’s new album is in some ways a return to the sound and
approach of their early records. “There’s no question that
history is a big part of this record,” admits Grohl. Despite his
shiny, well-equipped studio, he decided to record Wasting Light
in his garage at home, and in a nod to his lo-fi, DIY roots,
recorded to tape rather than digitally on a computer. Like
Nevermind, Wasting Light is something of an antidote to the
overproduced mainstream pop that currently fills the charts. It’s
not the only thing that sets the band apart.
25
The music industry has changed since Foo Fighters released

7. their first album in 1995. “Historically record sales accounted
for the majority of band revenues,” explains Chris Carey, senior
economist at PRS for Music, a not-for-profit organisation which
collects and distributes public performance royalties for
composers, songwriters and music publishers. “As record sales
have suffered in recent years the industry has looked to other
areas for revenue. Synchronisations [music used in computer
games and TV programmes] and merchandise sales have become
increasingly important, and the boom in live music is well
reported. It used to be that bands would tour at a loss to sell
CDs. Nowadays music is often given away in order to generate
buzz and promote live events.”
How does this seismic shift in the record industry affect a band
such as the Foo Fighters? “They’ve got an established fan base
and a good track record, they’re an act coming to the top of the
market,” says Carey. “Their revenues won’t be representative of
what a band coming into the market now would experience. That
existing fan base, I’d imagine, will still buy physical albums
and, I would expect, have a good amount of money to spend on
concert tickets so what you can charge for a Foo Fighters gig is
more than you could for a newer band. As a result their earning
profile will be quite healthy: a good mix of live and recorded.”
Today, thanks to industry pressures, many popstars often have
to take the money wherever they can get it, whether it’s
corporate gigs, sponsorship deals or product placement in music
videos. In the week I met Foo Fighters, the Libyan revolution
was erupting and Beyoncé, Nelly Furtado and Usher had
donated to charity their million-dollar fees earned playing for
the Gaddafi family. “We’ve done corporate gigs to pay for
touring,” says Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, “but
we’ve never played for the Gaddafis! There’s nothing wrong
with getting paid to play music as long as it’s in the realms of
whatever moral standards you have…”
Despite the shift in the music industry, Foo Fighters, with a
secure fan base and stable income have been able to pick and
choose what they do. “I think at this point we’ve exceeded any

8. of the expectations we had for this band—musically or
financially,” explains Grohl. “The most important thing is that
we do what we do with the same integrity we had when we
started 16 years ago. We’re not a financially ambitious band—
we’re doing just fine. It comes down to how much do you really
need?”
Nate Mendel, the band’s bassist and longest-serving member
after Grohl himself, agrees: “All these ways you can exploit
your band commercially, we’ve done a lot of it, but compared to
a band similar to us, we’ve held back. We wanted to be in a
band that didn’t have to do that. It’s only our generation that’s
ever had a problem with it. Prior to and after 80s punk rock and
the alternative music of the 90s nobody cared. It’s only our
generation that was cautious about exploiting their music.”
30
“Punk-rock guilt,” laughs Hawkins. “I’m flying in this private
jet and eating lobster thermidor—but I’m not giving a song to
Honda!”
As internet piracy has taken its toll on the record industry,
revenue from live gigs and merchandise has become ever more
important. “If you’re not making money from records you have
to make it somewhere else,” says Carey. “Merchandise was up
more than 20 per cent in 2009 growing at a good rate and in
2008 live music was up about 13-14 per cent which is boom
growth.”
Piracy and the decline in record sales won’t have hit the Foo
Fighters as hard as many other newer bands—which may
explain why Grohl, who is president of his own label, Roswell
Records, is unconcerned about file sharing. When he was
growing up Grohl and his friends would swap tapes of their
favourite bands despite campaigns warning that “home taping is
killing the record industry”. Today, the internet has really put a
dent in the music business, Grohl acknowledges, but for him
file sharing is simply an extension of those home-made mix-
tapes. “To me, the most important thing is that people come and
sing along when we pull into town on tour,” he says. “Sharing

9. music is not a crime. It shouldn’t be. There should be a deeper
meaning to making music than just selling downloads.”
Grohl’s experience with Nirvana has coloured the way he now
runs Foo Fighters. “I learnt a lot of lessons from being in
Nirvana. A lot of beautiful things and a lot of…” he pauses,
“lessons of what not to do. I’m not a businessman, but when it
comes to making music I’ve kind of figured out a way of doing
it without anyone getting hurt.” He drums his fingers,
performing a short paradiddle against the arm of the leather
sofa.
After his death, Cobain’s estate passed to his wife, the singer
Courtney Love, who in 1997, with Cobain’s bandmates, formed
Nirvana LLC, a limited liability company to oversee their
interests. The three have at times fought over Nirvana’s legacy,
almost going to court in 2002 (a settlement was reached the day
before proceedings were due to begin) and in 2009 scrapping
over the use of Cobain’s likeness in computer game Guitar Hero
5. In April 2006, Love sold 25 per cent of her share in
Nirvana’s catalogue to Primary Wave Music for a reported
$50m.
35
When he formed Foo Fighters, Grohl set up Roswell Records as
a holding company for the band’s entire music catalogue, which
is then licensed to a record company for a six- to seven-year
period at a time. “Unfortunately, a lot of musicians sign away
their freedoms when they enter into these big business
contracts. It’s an age-old story. It’s still happening. I don’t
think there’s a place for that kind of outside control when it
comes to being creative.”
Are you a control freak? I ask. “Absolutely. No question. I am a
controlling freak. I’m not a control freak, I’m a controlling
freak. This is our baby. When it comes to making music, we
have our own process, we have our own crooked democracy…”
Democracy? Or is it a benign dictatorship? “Well, yeah. Show
me a band of five people where there’s no leader… I just don’t
think it could happen. At the end of the day, it’s my name at the

10. bottom of the cheque.”
Foo Fighters are now embarking on another stadium-filling
world tour. As Grohl, the perfect rock star, headed off, I
couldn’t help thinking of the two fortune cookies I’d spotted
earlier pinned to his fridge. “An interesting musical opportunity
is in your near future,” read one. The other said simply: “Study
and prepare yourself and one day, your day will come.”A
CLOSER LOOK AT Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters
· 1. Like most profiles, this one has a central theme. It examines
not only the actual person (Grohl) but also what the person
stands for or typifies. Sometimes the theme involves some sort
of tension or an important question. What is the tension for
Grohl, and what are the larger questions the profile raises and
asks readers to ponder?
· 2. For the most part, Wilkinson mostly keeps himself out of
the picture and lets the facts and his observations of Grohl and
his surroundings speak for themselves. However, the author
does enter the picture in a few places. Rather than coming out
and stating a thesis, he poses three key questions (in paragraphs
3, 21, and 25), and in the final paragraph muses about fortune-
cookie messages on Grohl’s refrigerator. How do these
questions and his final paragraph help direct readers toward
certain takeaway conclusions? How would you summarize the
thesis of this profile? 3. By citing research from two sources,
Wilkinson provides background information that describes the
larger social context in which Grohl lives and works. The first
source is a history of grunge music by Mark Yarm (paragraphs
10–15), the other an interview with music-industry economist
Chris Carey (paragraph 24 and 25). How does this research add
to the profile’s authority and move the main questions forward?
IDEAS FOR Writing 1. Write a profile that, like Wilkinson’s,
not only paints a rich portrait of someone who is a leader in his
or her field but also examines a central question about the
broader social, cultural, or professional context in which the
subject lives and works. Your subject could be an artist or an
ordinary person that would interest your readers. Include a

11. memo that states your purpose, your main point, and the readers
you are targeting. 2. Choose an artist of performer that you
admire and write a rave about that person and his or her work
(see Chapter 6). Provide some context about the contemporary
scene that helps explain what makes this person and work so
extraordinarily exemplary and wonderful.