Dave Grohl lied about his age to join a punk band at 17
Dave Grohl never took a drum lesson. He learned by playing along to Rush and punk records, claimed to be older than he was to win an audition with the Washington band Scream, and quit high school to tour. Four years later a phone number from a friend put him behind the kit for Nirvana.
Born in Warren, Ohio, in 1969 and raised mostly by his mother in Virginia after his parents split, Grohl started guitar at 12, grew bored of lessons and taught himself. A summer with a cousin near Chicago turned him and his sister into punks; his first concert was Naked Raygun in 1982. Back home, as class vice president, he slipped snippets of Bad Brains and Circle Jerks into the morning announcements. He switched from guitar to drums when his band reshuffled, and hundreds of nights at the 9:30 Club in Washington shaped his taste.
Scream toured hard until the band fell apart mid-tour in 1990 when its bassist left. Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne had brought Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic to a Scream show; Grohl, who thought their record sleeve made them look like psycho lumberjacks, called Osborne for advice and was told Nirvana needed a drummer. He auditioned in Seattle, joined, and played on Nevermind, recorded at Sound City in early 1991. Quietly, he also released his own songs on a cassette under the name Late!
After Cobain's death in April 1994 Grohl retreated to County Kerry in Ireland. Spotting a hitchhiker in a Cobain T-shirt convinced him he could not outrun the grief, so he flew home and in October recorded a fifteen-track demo, playing almost everything himself. He turned down an offer to become Tom Petty's permanent drummer.
Not wanting a solo career, he built a band, Foo Fighters, around that demo, which came out as their debut in July 1995. The group has since released 12 studio albums. Grohl entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, with Nirvana in 2014 and Foo Fighters in 2021.
Source: Dave Grohl
