Dave grohl quotes

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it'd take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn't want to retreat.

When there's so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you've already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

You will only be great at things you love to do don't pursue a career in something you hate to do.

The human element of making music is what's most important.

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can't replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

It's funny, there aren't too many musicians that also moonlight as studio engineers. There's a few - the really brilliant ones.

Just the other day someone threw a bra duct-taped to a tennis ball. I just stood there, playing guitar, thinking how this was totally premeditated. Some girl sat around inventing a way to get her bra onstage from 40 rows back.

There's nothing better than having a bottle of beer in your hand in the waves.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

It’s every band’s right, you shouldn’t have to do f___ing Glee. And then the guy who created Glee is so offended that we’re not, like, begging to be on his f___ing show… f___ that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee.

I once received a cape that was made from the little purple bags that Crown Royal Whisky comes in.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can't let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn't even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

I'd like to imagine I won't end up in Hell, but I think I've done too much acid and listened to too much death metal to sit on a cloud next to God with angels floating above my head.

Who's to say what's a good voice and not a good voice?

There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more.

When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.

Someone curating songs for you through your computer or being able to hold 10,000 songs on your watch - that convenience is pretty incredible, but so is the emotional impact of holding a Beatles record in your hand and listening to Let It Be.

I think maybe what happened was the convenience of technology overshadowed the experience of holding an album in your hands, and sitting on your bedroom floor, and staring at a picture of John Lennon or Gene Simmons or Johnny Rotten. That tangible experience can sometimes become an even more emotional experience, because it's really happening.

It was supposed to be gross, and now it's gorgeous.

Nothing's going to keep me from making music. If I were in the want-ads in the back of the paper or playing to six people at a coffee shop, I'd still love to make music.

Nickelback walks into a bar...there's no punchline because ruining music isn't funny.

One of the great things about Taylor Hawkins is his…shirtless body, really.

Always have the highest bar for yourself.

The fact that I'm virtually deaf. Any woman who's going to date a rock musician has to be prepared to repeat herself every 10 seconds. My wife asks me where we should go for dinner and it sounds like the schoolteacher from Charlie Brown.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer - I don't know if they'd ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

I don't think of Kurt as 'Kurt Cobain from Nirvana'. I think of him as 'Kurt'. It's something that comes back all the time. Almost every day.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

If you were to sit me down in a classroom, with fluorescent lights humming and some woman trying to teach me Italian, there's no way. But scream goes to Italy, we stay in a squat, and the only way you can ask someone where to take a piss is to do it in Italian. So I learned Italian.

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That's what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don't. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He's a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life.

Develop that individuality by working as hard as you can at what you love.

Being in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life. But we're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing - we missed getting in the van, loading our equipment, and watching it break down in the middle of a show. And that feeling hasn't gone away. There's nothing I'd rather do than make music. It's the love of my life.

The best time for gum is just before getting onstage. I need a minty-fresh microphone.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It's one of the reasons I dropped out of school. Give me something to assemble, I won't look at the directions, I'll try to figure it out by myself. It's why I love Ikea furniture.

I listen to boy band music before I have to fire someone.

What we feel most comfortable doing is playing loud, screaming rock songs.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

Being in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life.

When I sit down to interview people, I don't hold questions and I don't know the answers. They're more like conversations that become lessons.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.

There's poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don't like doing what people expect me to do.

I think the producers or whoever's doing the show are tripping so hard. They must be on acid. They live in this, like, weird grass mound and there's this 'sun' in the sky with this little baby's face that's just, like, bleaaargh-aarghagh. It's just so totally insane. It's such an acid thing, man. For kids!

The most important thing for me is my family, and my health and happiness, and making sure everyone's cool.

When something good comes your way, you better feel fortunate, because it doesn't last forever.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's gathering people together to do something fun.

Mom, thanks for letting me drop out of high school. Haha!

I had never been in charge of anything. I'd always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I'd never been in charge of an organization.

As I get older... I start to realize that life ain't half bad. Each year, I'm amazed that I'm still alive. I don't take any of this for granted, I'm a lucky dude.

I guess it was exciting that every time I pulled up to the gate of my house, I wondered if someone was going to jump out of the bush and stab me in the face.

I think actually singing the words is more therapeutic than just sitting down to write them, because then you are letting it out, and it's coming from your gut.

CBGB was a wild place, ... The first time I ever played there was in 1987, I think, with my hardcore band, Scream. And I remember the craziest [thing] about that club was you could be in front of the stage and it could be louder than any show you've ever been to in your life. But if you were towards the back of the club at the bar, you could sit and have a conversation with someone. It was the weirdest thing to me.

At school where you a dunce or a teacher's pet? All of the above. I was stupid so they thought I was cute.

Ramones or AC/DC are two bands that have managed to keep their signature sound and their signature formula for years and years and album after album after album, without it seeming like a dead-end street.

There's always gonna be rock n' roll bands, there's always gonna be kids that love rock n' roll records, and there will always be rock n' roll.

It's terrifying to play your favorite band's song in front of your favorite band.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do. It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct, it's not about what goes on in a computer. It's about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].

Actually, I didn't start sweating until I had children.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors - old friends, family.

Dude, maybe not everyone loves 'Glee.' Me included. I watched 10 minutes and it wasn't my thing.

How do I stay humble? Because I'm the best at being humble.

Most people don't take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don't really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It's that thing that determines what the album sounds like.

To women, drummers seem like these adorable, sexy Neanderthals, but lead singers seem mysterious and dangerous. So while the lead singers all want to be David Bowie, floating into parties and being the center of attention, it's the drummers who are in the corner doing keg stands and breaking tables. Usually it's the drummers who get the fun-loving ladies and the singers who get the nutcases.

If you're trying to connect to people with music - it's more of an outward process and a lot of times musicians can be very inward.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine - it kinda sucks the life out of music.

I'd love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

And later, if I ever felt that I was getting swept away by the craziness of being in a band, well, I'd go back to Virginia.

The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically.

That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.

I'm not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

There's something about heartbreak that makes for great music, but the same could be said for Jägermeister. Hangovers make for great music, too.

After 10 years, I have been touring for 20, playing basically the same type of music, a four-piece or three-piece type of music with loud, crashing drums and screaming vocals. It gets to the point where you're looking for something new, and you don't want to do something that's way too left-field, for fear that it might seem contrived.

I've experienced great things, I've experienced great tragedies. I've done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there's more.

No one is you, and that is your power.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that's the most important thing for people to do.

It's a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that's a good thing. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.

There's a band in a garage right now writing songs for an album that will do the same thing 'Nevermind' did some 20 years ago. We don't know who and where, but it will f***ing happen again. All it takes is for that storm to break.

It's not until recently that I could even imagine myself as an adult. But these kids today, they look at me like I'm Neil Young. Nirvana is the band their parents listen to.

I love Black Sabbath. They made an amazing contribution to music today. Almost every band that made it big in the Nineties owed a debt to them.

I believe the history of American music is just as important as anything political because it's changed generations of people.

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.

Don't look at the poster on your wall and think 'I could never do that.' Look at the poster on your wall and think 'I'm gonna do that!'

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

Wow, I get to wake up again? Ok. You have to make good with what you've got.

It's important to me that people feel connected to the band through the music, you know? I don't want it to be wallpaper. I don't want it to be background music. I want it to be clear: This is the song. These are the words. If you feel the same way as I do, sing it as loud as you can.

When you're young, you're not afraid of what comes next. You're excited by it.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it's just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. If you really feel like that barrier is gone, you become Freddie Mercury. I consider him the greatest frontman of all time. Like, it's funny? You'd imagine that Freddie was more than human, but... You know how he controlled Wembley Stadium at Live Aid in 1985? He stood up there and did his vocal warm ups with the audience. Something that intimate, where they realize, 'Oh yeah, he's just a f***ing dude.'

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down.

To women, drummers seem like these adorable, sexy Neanderthals, and lead singers seem mysterious and dangerous. So while the lead singers all want to be David Bowie, floating into parties and being the center of attention, it's the drummers who are in the corner doing keg stands and breaking tables. Usually it's the drummers who get the fun-loving ladies and the singers who get the nutcases.

From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time.

I had a Super Grover doll growing up. Super Grover was very clumsy, he wasn't very good-looking. But in his own way he'd always save the day.

It's tough to go to sleep at night, and I wake up after five hours because I feel like I'm wasting time. I just sit up at night and think about what I can do next.

We only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters.

If you play a Nickleback song backwards you'll hear messages from the devil. Even worse, if you play it forwards you'll hear Nickleback.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I've never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

There's some things in life that you really consider to be priceless.

CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something.

I'm a skinny, geeky, high school dropout - it works, kids! Sensitive guys always get the girl. You'll get laid 10 times as much as that guy on the football team 'cause he's on steroids and he's gonna get fat.

What's the last thing a drummer says in a band? 'Hey guys, why don't we try one of my songs?'

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap - and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and 'Heart Shaped Box' and stuff on 'In Utero' just happened that way.

I've always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I'm a sucker for it, whether it's Linkin Park or Little Richard.

Always have the highest bar for yourself. Wake up everyday and no matter how crappy you feel, want to change something for the better. Do something that makes someone happy. Create something that inspires someone. Be someone's light when they are hopeless.

I think that if you're passionate about something and you're driven and you're focused, then you can pretty much do anything that you want to do in life.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it.

I think I'm scared a lot. I'm scared of almost everything. And I'm constantly trying to work my way through each obstacle, whether it's a present, past, or future relationship.

To me the most important thing is getting into a studio and making an album that is 12 or 14 amazing songs, getting up onstage, and making people happy by livening the rock.

I'm not like a voracious hoarder who has 50,000 albums of vinyl stacked in a storage space in the San Fernando Valley. But I do have albums from the last 40 years of my life.

There's nothing I'd rather do than make music. It's the love of my life.

Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there's old luggage, a couple of bikes. It's big enough to put one minivan in. That's it. No dartboard. I'm so not macho.

Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America - land of the free, home of the brave.

There's something about pulling out a real tape from a shelf and looking at it and knowing that 'Everlong' is on it, or 'Best of You' is on it, and it's really special.

Never lose faith in real rock and roll music. Never lose faith in that. You might have to look a little harder, but it's always going to be there.

Be someone's light when they are hopeless.

I'm kind of claustrophobic... It's not even like enclosed spaces. It's like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can't get out.

You look up to your heroes and you shouldn't be intimidated by them; you should be inspired by them.

Everybody now thinks that Nashville is the coolest city in America.

I dropped out of high school and I couldn't go to college 'cause I wasn't smart enough, so I'd resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends.

If it weren't for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

Rock stars are like sports stars: If you snap your ankle, you're done.