Dave Grohl is easily one of the most accomplished rock musicians alive today. He may not have achieved that success, however, had his mom not bought him a “Radio Shack cassette player” as a kid, which he used to self-therapize.
The Foo Fighters frontman reflected on some of his earliest memories during an appearance on The Writer’s Block show, from SiriusXM’s The Spectrum. Opening up to host David Fricke, Grohl explained that the thoughtful gift from his mom gave him the space to process his feelings and eventually realize his full potential.
“At an early age, I found this music thing to help me through life, you know, and also to find this voice,” he began. “Even if no one was listening, just to like, to hear it.
Grohl then went on to recall how it all started. “I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when I was young, my mother bought me a cassette player,” he said. “It was just like one of those Radio Shack cassette player things, and you could record on it and play back. I used to listen to cassettes as I went to sleep.”
The former Nirvana drummer then shared that when he was “11 or 12 years old,” he began to have “a lot” on his mind. “So I had a cassette, and I put it in, and I just started talking about all of my problems. I was talking about like my problems at school, my social life, or family problems, or just, you know, puberty and adolescence, whatever it was.”
The young Grohl would record himself and then play it back so he could “fall asleep listening to myself talk about my problems.”
“It was such a strange thing because when you’re sort of processing these things in your mind, you’re not necessarily giving it a voice,” he continued. “And to listen to yourself back, you kind of, you step outside of yourself in a way, and you’re realizing these emotions, right?”
Fricke then noted that “it’s as if someone’s translating what’s going on in your head to you, even though it was actually you. It’s like you’re your own therapist.”
“Right, yes. I forgot about this for about 20 years,” Grohl replied. “Then I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I used to talk to myself about my problem. What the f?’ It’s just so weird. But in a way, that’s what music can be.”
Dave came to understand that what he was doing was a form of songwriting
After Fricke pointed out, “that’s what songwriting is,” Grohl confirmed it. “Exactly,” he said. “And so there’s sometimes where I’ll just spit out a lyric because I’m late to do a vocal and everyone’s waiting. Yeah. And there, it’s sometimes those moments I’ll listen back, and they can be the most revealing. They’re just kind of coming off the top of my head.”
“It’s spontaneous combustion,” he went on today. “And so, you know, I feel so blessed and so grateful that I found this thing, even if I’m the only one listening to it. That I can hear myself back and step outside of it to have that 40,000-foot view on life.”
The post Dave Grohl Had a Fascinating Childhood Self-Therapy Method That Ultimately Made Him a Better Songwriter appeared first on VICE.
