In case you’re just joining us, here’s a newsflash: Dave Grohl is the f-ing man. He might even be God. There is simply no disputing this. Just like with classical religious arguments about God, any argument you could make to the contrary is invalid by simple virtue of my declaring it so. So there.
With that out of the way, Grohl sat down with Billboard to discuss his 2011 — a year he termed the best of his life — (“I was at a New Year’s Eve party and someone asked me how was my year, and I said I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life, and I actually meant it.”) — and offered a no B.S. assessment of the present state of rock music, in the course of which he disclosed how he prefers to go to a concert.
I went to see Soungarden four or five months ago; I didn’t stand in the VIP section, I ran down and got crushed in front of the stage and danced around sweaty with a bunch of people I didn’t know for an hour and 45 minutes.
Yeah, like I said, Dave Grohl is the man.
Anyway, the always quotable Grohl had this to say about rock-n-roll in it’s present form…
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. For the fans, I don’t think it’s gone away at all. I don’t know too many people that give up listening to rock’n’roll. It’s seems to be fucking alive and well.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with rock at all. It’s overlooked. And right now, the current musical climate is not unlike it was back in 1991, right before Nirvana [Grohl’s former band] got popular. The late ’80s was full of over-produced pop that kids had nothing to grab hold of — they had no way of connecting to this hair metal band singing about fucking strippers in a limousine on Sunset Boulevard. Who can relate to that? Then you had a bunch of formulaic pop songstress bullshit, and music was boring. And then a bunch of bands with dirty kids got on MTV and rock’n’roll became huge again. And I feel like that’s about to happen. Something’s got to give. It can’t be song contests on television for the rest of our lives. It can’t be the same playlists on every radio station for the rest of our lives. It can’t be music made entirely by computers with people talking over it the rest of our lives. It can’t go that way, it just won’t.
That’s right. Rock won’t die because Dave Grohl said so. DEAL WITH IT, HATERS!
Going on, Grohl expressed some thoughts on the music business in general. The gist: Stop putting out a sh*tty product!
Someone asked me recently, “What do you think the problem with the music industry is?” I said, take the Adele record, for example. It’s an amazing record and everybody’s so shocked that it’s such a phenomenon. I’m not. You know why that record’s huge? Because it’s fucking good and it’s real. When you have an artist singing about something real and she’s incredibly talented, it deserves all the rewards it gets, it’s a great record. Now imagine if all records were that good. Do you think only one of them would sell? Fuck no! All of them would. If all records were that good the music business would be on fire, but they’re not. A lot of people are promoting records that are just throw-it-against-the-wall-see-if-it-sticks meaningless bullshit. Everybody has the responsibility to do the right thing and promote artists that mean something.
One of these days the Church of Dave Grohl will be a thing. Consider me already a disciple.
(Pics and GIFs via Dave Grohl is the Sex)
