(Credits: Far Out / Roger Woolman)
Sun 1 February 2026 16:00, UK
For all of the great musicians Dave Grohl has worked with, there will always be those few who shine above all the others.
Nirvana might be a foundational part of his career, and Foo Fighters has been his way to express himself for the past few decades, but his love of classic rock is what shaped his heart into what it is today every single time he packs stadiums with his friends. He may be one of the biggest musicians to walk the Earth today, but Grohl also never took a second of his time in the spotlight for granted.
You have to remember that this was a guy who grew up playing in punk bands throughout Washington, DC, so it wasn’t like he was looking to be in the next Beatles or anything. Punk was all about quoting your heart, and while it might not have resulted in the most radio-friendly music when he first began making records, Grohl was more than happy to live out his fantasy as a punky answer to John Bonham and Neil Peart. Then again, time had other plans for him when he started writing his own tunes.
The idea of the drummer having a new song might be one of the biggest jokes in the music industry, but in Grohl’s case, he was already working with some magic before Kurt Cobain’s untimely passing. He wanted the chance to blow people away, and while it did end up starting with the riff from ‘Scentless Apprentice’, the bones of what would become tunes like ‘Marigold’ and Foo Fighters’ ‘Exhausted’ were already being workshopped during those final Nirvana sessions.
But it wasn’t the same as what Cobain was working with. He had a knack for putting together a bunch of power chords and writing a melody that fit everything perfectly, but you could usually see where Grohl was going with his melodies. He followed in the footsteps of John Lennon and Paul McCartney when he wrote his songs, but there’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have heard any of them if he had taken Tom Petty’s advice when he first played with him on Saturday Night Live.
Grohl needed to take that first step back into music after Cobain died, but after testing out those Foo Fighters songs, he didn’t want to spend his life as a sideman. Turning down someone like Petty wasn’t going to be easy, but it was the spirit that he had whenever he conducted himself that made Grohl want to roll the dice and see what life would be like fronting his own outfit.
Even if he wasn’t necessarily punk, Petty’s fearlessness is something that Grohl never forgot whenever he was working on his own projects, saying, “I jumped at the opportunity. Because I’ve always loved Tom Petty. Even when I was a stubborn, cynical, punk-rock asshole, I still lived Tom Petty. Because I felt like he was a stubborn, cynical, punk-rock asshole too. So, it was interesting. I easily could have become someone’s drummer. But I didn’t want to be anyone’s drummer.”
And it’s not hard to see why Petty had that kind of edge to him. His determination about doing what was right made him seem almost dangerous to every single label that he worked with, and while a lot of people would have seen him as a flashback to The Byrds, he had the kind of fire in his belly that would have made John Lydon blush when he first saw the rest of the Heartbreakers up close for the first time.
So while there might be a certain hierarchy for what is and isn’t pure rock and roll, there’s no contest that Petty belongs in his own category. He wasn’t the most aggressive rock and roll star in the world, but whereas most people had to get a spiked mohawk and put safety pins through their cheeks to look dangerous, but the best rockstars are the ones that lead by example rather than play up their swagger.
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