Best quotes by Dave Grohl

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand, it's all 1′s and 0′s, this digital cloud floating in the ether, but with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand.

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.

The word ‘grunge’ became a household term, and fashion runways were filled with flannel shirts and long underwear. Oh, how we laughed… Every now and then when I’m feeling a little nostalgic, I put on my ‘grunge tuxedo’ - flannel shirt, long shorts with long underwear underneath them, and a pair of Doc Martens - and dance around the house to Tad records.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye he set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still to this day I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

I have crazy claustrophobic dreams, weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down - oh my God, it's a casket. Just freaky stuff like that.

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.

A lot of people are promoting records that are just throw-it-agains t-the-wall-see- if-it-sticks meaningless bullshit. Everybody has the responsibility to do the right thing and promote artists that mean something.

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.

Once I got into punk rock, I started mail-ordering albums, because a lot of the record stores in my area didn't carry the punk bands from England or Sweden or Chicago or Los Angeles

I had long hair since I was 17 years old. It was time for me to let go. I hated being the guy at the wedding in a suit with a ponytail.

I get confused between the rock and roll thing and my movie star thing... We're f - -ing movie stars.

I like the rock documentaries that make it seem real. Some rock documentaries are meant to make the bands look larger than life.

I'm obsessed with Led Zeppelin and have been since I was a teenager

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you've ever talked to that dude, he's the sweetest guy in the world - he's just a trip.

Neil Young is my hero. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That's what that guy does.

A long time ago, I made a promise to myself: "Okay, you know what? I'm going to play music, and hopefully I'll make enough money that I can go back to school. Once I make enough money to put myself through school, that's what I'm going to do."

The Nirvana unplugged album was something we'd always knew we were capable of doing, but it was just a matter of doing it right.

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.

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.

I'm not like a voracious hoarder who has 50,000 albums of vinyl stacked in a storage space in the San Fernando Valley. But I do have albums from the last 40 years of my life.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it's not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That's how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be a musician.

No one has any faith in the tape anymore - everyone just relies on computers and considers the hardrive to be the safest option, and I don't. I think an analog tape is something you can hold.

I'm happy that I have my family, and I'm happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing's changed, really.

I don't want to say that most rock bands live these formulaic biography existences - but they kinda do. There's always a divorce. There's always an OD. There's always a bad business manager.

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'm not allergic to fashion. I'm just one of those people who when they put on a suit look like they're going to a funeral or to court.

It's good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that's better than you'd imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn't be as much fun.

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.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn't even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

Different boards do different things to the sound that's coming through them. An old Neve desk does embellish it in a way that makes it sound sort of bigger or warmer. It doesn't change the performance but it does enhance the way that it sounds.

In a way, as much as we love to be a big, loud rock band, the acoustic album was a lot easier to make than the rock records. I think because it was brand new territory for the band.

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.

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 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.

A place like Sound City, which was just a big, beautiful room where you would hit record and capture the sound of the performer - a place like that isn't necessarily in demand anymore.

You can make yourself the greatest singer in the world or the best drummer in the world with the aid of technology.

The late '60s and the '70s, a lot of this really beautiful equipment was being made and installed into studios around the world and the Neve boards were considered like the Cadillacs of recording consoles. They're these really big, behemoth-looking recording desks; they kind of look like they're from the Enterprise in Star Trek or something like that. They're like a grayish color, sort of like an old Army tank with lots of knobs, and to any studio geek or gear enthusiast it's like the coolest toy in the world.

I love Black Sabbath. They made an amazing contribution to music today. Almost every band that made it big in the Nineties owed a debt to them.

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.

'In Utero' was the first time I'd made an album that reached into the dark side. I remember the conflict and the uncertainty. I remember all those things when I hear 'Pennyroyal Tea.'

It's funny; recently I've started to notice people's impersonations of me, and it's basically like a hyperactive child.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn't see any rock & roll bands.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It's one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

I'm told that my blood sugar level was twelve times the legal limit - I was sweating honey.

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.

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It's an individual-feel thing, you know?

I love being a drummer but I love being a musician in general and I love the Foo fighters.