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David GrohlDavid Grohl
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Dave Grohl (born January 14, 1969 in Warren, Ohio) is a rock musician, who was the drummer of the grunge band Nirvana from 1990 until the band split up in 1994 after frontman Kurt Cobain's suicide. He formed the band Foo Fighters later that year.
Grohl, who was raised in Alexandria, Virginia, began his music career in the 1980s as the drummer for the band Freak Baby, and later joined the Washington, DC punk rock band Scream. Buzz Osbourne of The Melvins recommended him to Nirvana after they fired drummer Chad Channing.Dave Grohl joined Nirvana and moved to Seattle in 1990, where at first he shared an apartment with Kurt Cobain. Grohl's distinctively heavy-handed drumming, a style he learned from banging marching band sticks on his bed as a teenager, were a driving force behind Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind.
Although while a member of Nirvana Grohl was known to most fans only as a drummer and backing vocalist, he had in fact played guitar for several years. In 1990 he released a cassette demo, Pocketwatch, under the name "Late!", for which he played all of the instruments. From this recording, the song "Marigold" would later become a Nirvana b-side (with Grohl on vocals), while "Winnebago" would later be released as a Foo Fighters song, as the b-side of "This Is A Call". Grohl also contributed a riff which would later become "Scentless Apprentice", from Nirvana's album In Utero.
Following Cobain's death Grohl recorded a fifteen-track demo, on which he again played all instruments with the exception of a guitar part on "X-Static", played by Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs, and the bass part of "Alone + Easy Target", which was played by Krist Novoselic. The demo gained considerable buzz and was released, unchanged except for trimming three tracks, in 1995 as the Foo Fighters' debut album. Grohl did not want the effort to be considered the start of a solo career, so he recruited other band members. Former Nirvana member Pat Smear(guitar), and two members of the band Sunny Day Real Estate, William Goldsmith(drums) and Nate Mendel(bass).
After the release of their debut, the band released their second album The Colour and the Shape in 1997. Considered by many as the band's finest work to-date, it consists of hits such as: "Everlong", "My Hero", and "Monkey Wrench". However, after the release two members, Pat Smear and William Gold Smith left the band. Two new musicians soon replaced the departed members, Taylor Hawkins, who replaced Goldsmith and Franz Stahl, who replaced Smear. Stahl later left the group in the midst of a world tour and was replaced shortly thereafter by Chris Shiflett.
The Foo Fighters' tremendous success led once again to a life of touring and traveling for Grohl, who throughout the 1990s lived in Seattle, Washington and Los Angeles before returning to his native Virginia, where his basement served as the recording studio for the 1999 album There is Nothing Left to Lose.
Aside from the Foo Fighters, Grohl has worked on several other musical projects, earning a reputation as a rock and roll "jack of all trades". He recorded the score for the 1996 film Touch. In 2001 he joined Queens of the Stone Age as a drummer, both for the recording of their album Songs for the Deaf and the tour which followed the album's release. In 2002 also played drums for Tenacious D. He has also drummed on the latest Killing Joke album.
Grohl spent the last several years working on a new side project named PROBOT. According to an interview published in the magazine Guitar World, the project began as a self-induced backlash against the more commercial friendly material Grohl wrote for There is Nothing Left to Lose. The album features various metal singers on vocals, notably Lemmy of Motцrhead, and is entirely Grohl's instrumentation except for 2 lead guitar tracks performed by Soundgarden's Kim Thayil.
In the 2002 Triple J Hottest 100 Dave Grohl achieved a new record of having a part in 10 of the top 100 songs, including the Nirvana track "You Know You're Right", over the release of which he and Novoselic had spent years battling with Cobain's widow Courtney Love.
Then later in 2003 he, once again on drums, helped Chan Marshall of the band Cat Power in recording the album "You Are Free".
In 2002 the Foo Fighters returned to the studio and released their fourth album, One by One.
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