Dave Grohl famous quotes

No one is you, and that is your power.
-- Dave Grohl

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Writing #Names

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Real #Rocks #Rock And Roll

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Band #Fighter #Music Love

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

#Saws #Rock N Roll #Importance

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

#Sports #Stars #Rocks

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

#Musician

I like the rock documentaries that make it seem real. Some rock documentaries are meant to make the bands look larger than life.
-- Dave Grohl

#Real #Rocks #Looks

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

#Afterlife #Suitcases

When you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Journey #Order

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

#Play #Drug

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

#Song #Rocks #Loud

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,
-- Dave Grohl

#Play #People #Singing

The Nirvana unplugged album was something we'd always knew we were capable of doing, but it was just a matter of doing it right.
-- Dave Grohl

#Albums #Matter #Capable

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Play #Devil

In a way, as much as we love to be a big, loud rock band, the acoustic album was a lot easier to make than the rock records. I think because it was brand new territory for the band.
-- Dave Grohl

#Thinking #Rocks #Albums

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Going Away #Arena #Capacity

We just do what we always do. We play shows and go home and rest and then play more shows.
-- Dave Grohl

#Home #Play #Shows

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Rocks #Idols #Play

I get confused between the rock and roll thing and my movie star thing... We're f - -ing movie stars.
-- Dave Grohl

#Stars #Confused #Rocks

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #People #Different

Once I got into punk rock, I started mail-ordering albums, because a lot of the record stores in my area didn't carry the punk bands from England or Sweden or Chicago or Los Angeles
-- Dave Grohl

#Rocks #Records #Sweden

It's funny; recently I've started to notice people's impersonations of me, and it's basically like a hyperactive child.
-- Dave Grohl

#Children #People

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#People #Band #Records

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

#Important #Elements #Music Is

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].
-- Dave Grohl

#Heart #Play #People

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Emotional #Impact

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

#Wall #Cancer #Artist

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Space #Years #Albums

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

#Song #Guy #Trying

For every Foo Fighters record, we've had two or three beautiful, acoustic-based songs, but they never usually make their way to the record, because we want to make rock records.
-- Dave Grohl

#Beautiful #Song #Rocks

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Sound #Tools #Machines

My whole life, I have listened to people like Neil Young, or Crosby, Stills & Nash, and artists that have made a career out of the mellow, folky, acoustic dynamic.
-- Dave Grohl

#Artist #Careers #People

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

#Song #Fighter #Foo Fighters

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

#Love Of My Life

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

#Rocks #Important #Generations

My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12.
-- Dave Grohl

#Guitar #Long #Band

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

#Drug

I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Writing #Intention

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Falling In Love #Differences #Married

I hate the solo artist aspect of rock-'n'-roll. I don't have enough personality or charisma to be a solo star.
-- Dave Grohl

#Stars #Hate #Artist

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Light #Inspire #Everyday

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Looks #Worst #Time Of My Life

Everybody now thinks that Nashville is the coolest city in America,
-- Dave Grohl

#Thinking #Nashville #Cities

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Years #Two #Signatures

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

#Dark #Listening #Sides

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Love Of My Life #Feelings #Band

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#People #Playing Music #Audacity

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Rocks #People

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

#People #Digital #Easy

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

#Quitting #Ready

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

#Forever #Way #Lasts

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

#Humble #Stay Humble #Be Humble

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Coffee #People #Paper

Most of our songs were written on acoustic guitar before they made it to the practice stage.
-- Dave Grohl

#Song #Guitar #Practice

A long time ago, I made a promise to myself: "Okay, you know what? I'm going to play music, and hopefully I'll make enough money that I can go back to school. Once I make enough money to put myself through school, that's what I'm going to do."
-- Dave Grohl

#School #Play #Long

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Years #Three #Pieces

Neil Young is my hero. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That's what that guy does.
-- Dave Grohl

#Hero #Past #Years

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Fun #Ideas #Trying

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

#Hangover #Great Music #Said

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Sexy #Fun #Party

When it comes to making an album I take that very seriously. I am meticulous, overworked. That's my time to put everything under the microscope.
-- Dave Grohl

#Albums #Microscopes #Meticulous

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Writing #Thinking #Singing

I had long hair since I was 17 years old. It was time for me to let go. I hated being the guy at the wedding in a suit with a ponytail.
-- Dave Grohl

#Letting Go #Hair #Years

It's nice when people are happy to hear that you're still alive, rather than feeling like "Oh, finally he's dead?"
-- Dave Grohl

#Nice #People #Feelings

With this record [The Colour and the Shape], I started taking the lyrics more seriously. This is a very personal album.
-- Dave Grohl

#Albums #Records #Shapes

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.
-- Dave Grohl

#Past #Thinking #Trying