Dave Grohl's keynote address at SXSW, a full report
When Dave Grohl took the stage at SXSW 2013 as keynote speaker he decided to start by sharing with the audience that when he told Bruce Springsteen about it he laughed out loud.
Well in spite of this opening remark Mr. Grohl did not disappoint one bit and delivered above and beyond expectations with a one hour address that had a strong focus on the early part of his development and career and with a running mantra: the musician comes first.
It all started with a riff, the riff of the track “Frankenstein” by the Edgar Winter Group that he heard on a compilation by K-Tel records. The song was only an instrumental but what he heard on there were the voices of musicians that were talking to one another, communicating through music. It wasn’t long until he got hold of a guitar that according to Grohl: “…sounded like goats yelling like humans and instantly became my obsession. It was this guitar and a Beatles songbook that ultimately set my life in this direction”.
At the beginning he was completely on his own, playing his guitar and fake drums on pillows in his bedroom day in and day out. He even figured out how to record himself as a one man band with a rudimentary combination of a cassette recorder and home stereo: by simply recording a track and then playing it back on the stereo while recording another he was creating a (terrible sounding) multi-track recorder. He actually demonstrated this during the keynote and whilst his playing was top notch, the recording was pretty bad.
A big watershed moment came when at 13, in 1982, when he went to visit relatives in Chicago and met his cousin Tracy who was a punk rocker with chains, leather and everything. She became his first hero and introduced him to a huge number of punk and rock bands that he devoured avidly. In Chicago he also attended his first gig in a tiny venue – the CubbyBear - and the noise, smells, chaos of it all made him want to be part of that world even more. It was the creative independence of the bands that struck him most of all, they were not part of a system and in that world there were no rules: “At 13 years old I realized I could do it all myself.“
He started joining in the music scene in back in Washington DC that was brimming with protest music – it was the Regan years after all. His Woodstock moment came on the 4th of July 1983 at the Rock Against Regan concert that was a recipe for a riot and was eventually dispersed by police. This was a turning point for him and eventually: ”I dropped out of high school and joined a band. Starved, slept on floors, on stages, under stages and loved every minute of it. I wanted to incite a riot, an emotion or a revolution and to inspire people to pick up an instrument”.
Eventually he heard that the band Nirvana was looking for a drummer. Nirvana had something he didn’t: they had songs and they had Kurt (Kobain). Without any hesitation he packed up and flew to Seattle to join the band.
They practiced in a barn every day and there was only the barn and the songs. Eventually after recording a few demos A&R people started pouring through and a bidding war started amongst labels. At one particular meeting when Kurt Kobain was asked by an A&R executive what he wanted, he replied that wanted for Nirvana to be the biggest band in the world. This to Grohl seemed impossible since the Billboard Top 10 in 1990 was completely filled with mainstream, pop music and he could not imagine how they could manage something like that. Eventually though they signed to Geffen Records and they were off to Sound City Studios to record their first album that turned out to be Nevermind.
Recording 13 songs in 16 days, with complete creating freedom, Nirvana was able to make music without any outside pressures or influences. The expectations of the label were pretty low and they only printed 3,500 copies initially that they thought would last for the first few months of the release. Little did they know that Nirvana's ripple would eventually become a tidal wave soon selling over 300,000 copies per week.
Grohl stressed the importance of finding your own voice more than once in the keynote: “We don’t need Pitchfork to help up determine the value of a song? Who f***ing cares? Who’s to say what’s a good voice or not a good voice, The Voice? [in reference to the TV program] Imagine bob Dylan singing Blowing in the Wind in front of Christina Aguilera" (a quote that was particularly appreciated by the crowd).
After the success of Nevermind, again the band was able to record In Utero without any restrictions and really listen to its out voice. Again an incredible success but soon after that came an indelible blow, the death of Kurt Kobain. Dave Grohl said: “When Kurt died I was lost, numb. The music I devoted my life to had now betrayed me. I had no voice. I turned off the radio, put away my drums and couldn’t bear hearing anyone else sing about pain or joy. I just hurt too much. But eventually that feeling I felt back on the 4th of July 1983 came back. The same feeling that made me feel possessed and inspired and enraged and so in love with life and music”.
He was soon back in a studio across the road from his house where he played every instrument, just as he had as a young kid in his bedroom, and created a collection of songs that he started giving out to friends and family under the name “Foo Fighters”. For him this was therapy, not a record, but after hearing people starting to talk about it – the tapes were going around fast – he decided to take his career in to his own hands and start a record label: Roswell Records.
Once again he felt that empowerment, that feeling that he could do it all himself, record the music, release the record, book the gigs and more. Most of all he again felt strong as ever the feeling that the musician has to come first so that even if the music was licensed or given to others to distribute, it had to get back to the musician in the end because it belongs to him.
To conclude the keynote, he mentioned that his daughters (3 and 6 years old) had recently learned how to play vinyl records and discovered the Beatles. He found them dancing around looking at the album artwork and having fun with the music. He said: “As a proud father I pray they are left to their own devices and realize that the musician comes first“.
(Andrea Leonelli)