Trivia / Dave Grohl

• Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: You've seen the bands he played with in the main page, right?
• Bury Your Art: Grohl's 1992 album Pocketwatch, recorded under the pseudonym Late!, was released via an obscure indie label that manufactured cassette copies on demand. According to Grohl, the label repeatedly asked him to put out a CD release of the album, but he refused to do so because "it was never intended to be a big thing;" Grohl would never reissue the album after the label went under. This and the dubious fate of the master tapes^note the album was recorded directly onto cassette, resulting in the master tapes already deteriorating by the time the label requested a CD reissue resulted in original copies and bootleg CDs becoming highly sought after; Grohl would joke that one of his goals with the album was to deliberately drive up secondhand prices to ludicrous levels.
• Creator Breakdown: He recorded the Foo Fighters' debut album by himself as a way of coping with Kurt Cobain's death, and a few decades later would record the Foo album But Here We Are to deal with the death of bandmate Taylor Hawkins and his mother Virginia.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Most notable and literal being the Pocketwatch under the pseudonym Late! ("I just thought it would be funny to announce ourselves as 'We're Late!'"), which was only issued on cassette.
• Promoted Fanboy: And how! He started out as a fan of the punk band Scream and joined them as their drummer while still in his teens. It just grew from there. The Probot album was basically him collaborating with his favourite Heavy Metal artists. And he's gone on to play and record with many of the musicians that he grew up idolising, including members of Queen, Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, and even a frickin BEATLE!
• What Could Have Been:
  • Chuck Schuldiner and Tom Araya were approached for guest vocals on Probot, but due to medical situations (Chuck was battling brain cancer at the time) and scheduling conflicts respectively, this didn't work out. It's unknown which track Dave Grohl wanted Chuck to appear on, but Tom was the first choice for "Silent Spring", which was released with Kurt Brecht from D.R.I. on vocals instead: This might be why, of all the songs on the album, "Silent Spring" sounds the least like its respective guest vocalist's signature style.
  • After a brief turn as a drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (which included an SNL performance), Dave was offered a permanent spot, but declined.
    • He was also offered a spot in Danzig after their drummer left.
  • The timing of Kurt Cobain's passing and drummer Dave Abbruzzese's departure from Pearl Jam meant that, for a brief moment, Grohl was offered the spot behind the kit. Of course, he had other plans in the works, but there is footage of Grohl joining the band for an encore performance of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World".
  • According to Grohl, the Michael Jackson estate tapped him to provide drum overdubs for Jackson's first posthumous album, Michael; however, his parts were ultimately left off the final release. Despite this, he still receives a credit in the liner notes for playing drums on "(I Can't Make It) Another Day".

---