Dave Grohl opens up about his mother’s death: “We were best friends”
Dave Grohl has opened up about the death of his mother Virginia, who he has described as his “best friend”.
Virginia Grohl passed away in July 2022, and she has since been immortalised in the ten-minute song ‘The Teacher’, which was included on Foo Fighters’ newest album ‘But Here We Are’, released in June this year.
In an appearance on the Song Exploder podcast, Dave Grohl spoke in great emotional detail about the experience of being with his mother as she was dying, and his attempts at using music as a way to express his grief.
“I was with her for all of the time leading up to her passing,” he said. “Every day during that period, I would write something on the guitar, because I felt that if I didn’t have that release, I would explode.”
“I would spend the day at the hospital and then try to translate it musically, with no clear intention of what I was trying to achieve. I was finding these chords and progressions that mirrored the way that I felt.”
Speaking about the eventual song ‘The Teacher’, he continued: “She was the most important person in my life, so I thought this had to be the most important music I ever made.”
“I was probably my only friend who liked hanging out with their parent… We were best friends. I felt like I had to honour her, pay tribute to her with this piece of music. So that’s when it turned into something other than a song. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever written because I wrote it for such a gigantic reason.”
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Grohl had been down to appear as a guest star on Boygenius’ debut album, but he “slept through” the session.
Despite this, they did end up connecting when Grohl made a surprise appearance with the trio on stage at the Hollywood Bowl on October 31, playing drums on the song ‘Satanist’.
Telling NME how the surprise performance arose Bridgers explained: “I made friends with Dave backstage at a Billie Eilish show. He’s the coolest guy ever… I was texting the boys, being like, ‘I met Dave Grohl, and he exceeds every expectation of how a rock star can be in the world’. I think we, as a group, look for that a lot – like, who is living their life the way that we want to get old and live our lives?”
The former Nirvana drummer also released a live version of his 23-minute long instrumental track ‘Play’ earlier this month. Recorded back in 2018, it was the debut performance of the piece, with the live version clocking in at 36 minutes.
Grohl took a day off in Melbourne recently to help feed the homeless, volunteering with the charity The Big Umbrella Foundation. He treated people to “an epic American style BBQ with all the trimmings”.
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Max Pilley
NME
