said, ‘OK, you guys seem to know what you
needtodo,weknowwhatweneedtodo,
now I never want to have this conversa-
tion again.’ Because the last thing in the
worldthatIwanttothinkaboutbeforewe
walk onstage is something as dark as that.
So, yeah, the world has changed, but it’s
notkeepingthebandfromgoingouttodo
what we feel we need to do.”
Ifsecurityconcernsareasoberingtopic,
they pale in comparison with the news
thatbrokeonthemorningofthisinter-
view that Linkin Park vocalist Chester
Bennington had taken his own life, on
thesamedaythatChris
Cornell–whocommit-
ted suicide on May 18th
–wouldhaveturned53.
CornellandGrohlhad
been friends since their
days in the Seattle scene,
andhedirectedthe
video for “By Crooked
Steps” off Soundgarden’s
2012 album,King An-
imal. Mention of Cor-
nell’s name and how his
passing affected Grohl
finds the normally ver-
bose and upbeat front-
man struggling for
words, his voice break-
ing audibly. “God, it’s so
hard to even talk about,
Iget...he,um...He
wassuchasweetperson.
Itreallyhitmebecause
...well,foralotofdif-
ferent reasons, but I just
instantly missed him.
We weren’t best friends,
but we were friends, and
there’s something about
that connection that a
lot of Seattle musicians
had that was deeper
than distance or time.
When you bump into
a member of one of the
bands that exploded in
the early Nineties from
Seattle, we all had this
common bond. It didn’t matter if you were
drinking buddies or would just bump into
each other once a year on the road, you just
had something in common. And that was
a chaotic time for everyone to make their
way through, and some of them survived,
and some of them didn’t. And I felt like we
had gotten to the point where everyone had
made it through... well, most of us had
made it through, and.. .”
He sighs.
“It just broke my fucking heart, man.
And... the other thing that really aff ected
me was thinking about his band members,
because... that’s a long, hard road, man.
Youknow?Fuck,sosad.I’mstillsadaboutit. And then today I just heard that fuck-
ing [Chester Bennington] had died. God,
itmakesmesofuckingsadthat we’re here,
we’re blessed enough to have this life fi lled
with music, and I just wish that everybody
couldgrabaholdofthatand fi nd happi-
ness. Or peace. I understand these things
are much more complicated, but it really
breaks my fucking heart.”
Grohl, for one, has managed to grab a
hold of the music and find happiness, as ev-
idenced by the excitement with which he
talks about an impending Australian tour
–“It’sonlyamatteroftimebefore we makeour way there to do
the thing we love
to do the most” –
and his pride at the
new album. “I am
more proud of this record than anything
we’ve ever done. Usually I have a little bit
of nerves about some of the things we’ve
done on albums and I don’t necessarily go
on the street and hand them to people, but
this time I’m sending it to everybody I know
saying, ‘Listen to our new record, you have
to hear it!’ It’s bigger and better than any-
thing we’ve done. I’m literally texting my
friends saying, ‘Send me your e-mail ad-
dress,Iwanttosendyoutherecord.’”For all his success, Grohl refuses to ac-
knowledge his abilities as a songwriter.
“I don’t look in the mirror and think I’m
the most handsome person in the world. I
don’t listen to my live recordings and think
I sound like Pavarotti, and I don’t look
at my songs like I’m a great songwriter. I
just keep chipping away at it, and imag-
ine there’s no fi nish line, that until the day
I die I’ll try and write the song I can fi nal-
ly rest upon.”
Do you think you’ve come close?
“There are songs I’m very proud of over
the years, but my perspective is so dif-
ferent from the listen-
er because I see those
songs in my own hand-
writing, and I under-
stand every subtle ref-
erence in every verse
and every chorus. Most
of the songs that peo-
ple consider to be our
best are songs that took
no work at all. A song
like ‘My Hero’ came out
of my mouth as I was
demoing it in the base-
ment in Seattle in 1995.
A song like ‘Everlong’
happened pretty quick-
ly as well. ‘Best of You’
I wrote sitting smok-
ing cigarettes in my ga-
rage on a welcome mat
with a fucking boom
box next to me. I al-
ways see pictures of
Nick Cave sitting at a
desk with a typewriter,
and that’s how I imag-
ine brilliant writers to
write, not sitting on a
welcome mat next to a
mini van in a fucking
garage with a pile of
cigarettes next to you.”
He laughs.
“But I’m mostly
proud that our band
has survived. And over
he years it’s turned
nto a gigantic organ-
sation that works like a
family. At the end of the
ay, it’s my name at the
ottom of the cheque,
so ve become t e ead of this massive or-
ganisation where I have to steer the ship,
and it’s something I couldn’t have done
22 years ago. It’s taken me 22 years to fi g-
ure out how to do it. But also to just grow
comfortable in ourselves as a band. When
I look at photos of us back in the day I can
see that I was really trying to do this. And
I don’t necessarily feel like I need to try to
be in the Foo Fighters anymore. It’s just be-
come my life.”October, 2017 RollingStoneAus.com | Rolling Stone | 57GETTY
1Times Like These
(1) With Chris Cornell in 2013. “I
just instantly missed him,” says
Grohl of Cornell’s passing.
(2) Concrete and Gold producer
Greg Kurstin at 2017’s Grammys.2