In many ways, Dave Grohl feels that his time drumming for Nirvana played a direct result on how he leads Foo Fighters. Grohl, who'll release his latest album with the Foos, Medicine At Midnight, on Friday (February 5th), told The New York Times, “To me, this band has always represented this continuation of life. We’ve been accused of being the least dangerous band in the world, and I think that that’s justified in some ways, because I know what it’s like to be in that other band, and I know what that can lead to. That’s not why I play music. It’s not why I started playing music, and it’s not why I play music still.”
Bassist Nate Mendel explained that although Grohl is an easy-going bandleader — he's not afraid to make decisions as he sees fit: “There’s a deliberate effort to hold on to some innocence that conflicts with him running a band. Sometimes, he would just sweep stuff under the rug that was uncomfortable to talk about. I think he built up the confidence to say, 'If this needs to get done, it’s OK that I have to put on this bastard hat for a minute. I can do that and still be me, and the band can still be the band that it is.'”
Guitarist Chris Shiflett added that it's a good idea for someone to issue the final word: “If everybody had equal say, we’d probably argue about stuff a lot more. (But he) always handles it well, and if you look at the big picture, things have been really good all along the way. A certain level of success keeps everybody happy.”
Drummer Taylor Hawkins shed light on Dave Grohl as a bandleader: “Dave has a strong hold on every single thing that happens on our record — every bass note, every guitar note, every vocal, every everything. Sometimes he knows what he wants, y'know? But he also likes the idea of sparking off each other, which happens still. . . I want to be the biggest band in the world. There’s no question, and so does Dave. I think he always did.”
Dave Grohl told us in the past that his approach to songwriting is basic: “It's pretty simple with this band. If there's a melody and there's a good lyric, then we've got ourselves a song in a couple of minutes. If we could throw it together, and get an arrangement together, and put it down on tape, that's kind of what we do best, y'know: that simple, melodic rock that gets stuck in your head.”