When digital technology started becoming the norm, you've got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won't last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.
— Dave Grohl
I know a lot of people who wouldn't be comfortable with everything that comes with being in a band as big as Nirvana. The thing that I don't understand is not appreciating that simple gift of being able to play music.
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.
From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time.
It's funny; recently I've started to notice people's impersonations of me, and it's basically like a hyperactive child.
Actually, I didn't start sweating until I had children.
I'd love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.
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.
When you're recording to analog tape, it captures performance and you can't necessarily manipulate that in different ways. It is what it is.
My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn't have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.
When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side.
There weren't a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn't have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends.
When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors - old friends, family.
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.
Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America - land of the free, home of the brave.
I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.
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.
It was that famous joke: What's the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? 'Hey, I wrote a song.'
Joining a band without ever having really met the people before, you just want to be musically powerful.
Usually, when you go in to make a record, you have 30 songs, and you record 30 of them, and 12 of them make it to the record.
If it weren't for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.
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.
No, there's something about the sing-song cadence of children's music that has its place in rock.
My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.
Some people record onto tape, and then they pay for the tape, and download those onto a hard drive. Initially in a Pro Tools program. Other people go straight into digital, and use no tape at all.
I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn't see any rock & roll bands.
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 never needed much, and I never thought I'd get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.
The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically.
I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.
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 have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.
Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down.
Usually, when Nirvana made music, there wasn't a lot of conversation. We wanted everything to be surreal. We didn't want to have some contrived composition.
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.
Cause 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.
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.
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.
I'm so not macho. It's crazy. My man cave is so not a man cave.
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?
People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.
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.
I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It's one of the reasons I dropped out of school.
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.
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.
I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?
Dude, maybe not everyone loves 'Glee.' Me included. I watched 10 minutes and it wasn't my thing.
I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.
All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.
