Top 213 Quotes & Sayings by Dave Grohl - Page 3

One of the great things about Taylor Hawkins is his…shirtless body, really.

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

At school where you a dunce or a teacher's pet? All of the above. I was stupid so they thought I was cute.

It's funny, there aren't too many musicians that also moonlight as studio engineers. There's a few - the really brilliant ones.

I believe the history of American music is just as important as anything political because it's changed generations of people.

I'm a skinny, geeky, high school dropout - it works, kids! Sensitive guys always get the girl. You'll get laid 10 times as much as that guy on the football team 'cause he's on steroids and he's gonna get fat.

The fact that I'm virtually deaf. Any woman who's going to date a rock musician has to be prepared to repeat herself every 10 seconds. My wife asks me where we should go for dinner and it sounds like the schoolteacher from Charlie Brown.

Develop that individuality by working as hard as you can at what you love.

There's nothing better than having a bottle of beer in your hand in the waves.

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.

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.

I think the producers or whoever's doing the show are tripping so hard. They must be on acid. They live in this, like, weird grass mound and there's this 'sun' in the sky with this little baby's face that's just, like, bleaaargh-aarghagh. It's just so totally insane. It's such an acid thing, man. For kids!

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.

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.

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.

We only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters.

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.

As I get older... I start to realize that life ain't half bad. Each year, I'm amazed that I'm still alive. I don't take any of this for granted, I'm a lucky dude.

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.

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.

Most people don't take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don't really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It's that thing that determines what the album sounds like.

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.

Mom, thanks for letting me drop out of high school. Haha!

I listen to boy band music before I have to fire someone.

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.

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.

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.

When you're recording to tape, you usually just settle for what you have. There's not a lot of options to manipulate the performance.

If you were to sit me down in a classroom, with fluorescent lights humming and some woman trying to teach me Italian, there's no way. But scream goes to Italy, we stay in a squat, and the only way you can ask someone where to take a piss is to do it in Italian. So I learned Italian.

It was supposed to be gross, and now it's gorgeous.

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

The best time for gum is just before getting onstage. I need a minty-fresh microphone.

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.

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].

Always have the highest bar for yourself.

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

Everybody now thinks that Nashville is the coolest city in America.

It's important to me that people feel connected to the band through the music, you know? I don't want it to be wallpaper. I don't want it to be background music. I want it to be clear: This is the song. These are the words. If you feel the same way as I do, sing it as loud as you can.

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

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

I think maybe what happened was the convenience of technology overshadowed the experience of holding an album in your hands, and sitting on your bedroom floor, and staring at a picture of John Lennon or Gene Simmons or Johnny Rotten. That tangible experience can sometimes become an even more emotional experience, because it's really happening.

When I was a teenager, working towards dropping out of high school to starting to tour with bands, I'd drive around in my VW Bug every morning before school, very stoned listening over and over to Zeppelin. This song got to me because it just seemed mystical. There is something about those Celtic tunings that almost sounds Eastern. Somehow it would sweep me up into my own little trance-like state, like Sting with those shamans in the Amazon. But all I had was a bong and a Led Zeppelin cassette.

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

When I sit down to interview people, I don't hold questions and I don't know the answers. They're more like conversations that become lessons.

Sharing music is not a crime. It shouldn't be. There should be a deeper meaning to making music than just selling downloads.

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.

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.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It's one of the reasons I dropped out of school. 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'm big on taking the lady out to dinner. We have some candlelight romance every now and then. And our whole family is within a 6-mile radius. It's disgustingly domestic. I'm big on Costco.

CBGB was a wild place, ... The first time I ever played there was in 1987, I think, with my hardcore band, Scream. And I remember the craziest [thing] about that club was you could be in front of the stage and it could be louder than any show you've ever been to in your life. But if you were towards the back of the club at the bar, you could sit and have a conversation with someone. It was the weirdest thing to me.

How come drummers leave their drumsticks on the dashboard of their car? So they can park in the handicapped spaces.

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

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

CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something.

If you're trying to connect to people with music - it's more of an outward process and a lot of times musicians can be very inward.

It’s every band’s right, you shouldn’t have to do f___ing Glee. And then the guy who created Glee is so offended that we’re not, like, begging to be on his f___ing show… f___ that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee.

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.

There's a band in a garage right now writing songs for an album that will do the same thing 'Nevermind' did some 20 years ago. We don't know who and where, but it will f***ing happen again. All it takes is for that storm to break.

I guess it was exciting that every time I pulled up to the gate of my house, I wondered if someone was going to jump out of the bush and stab me in the face.

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