David Eric Grohl is an American singer, songwriter, musician and director. He is best known for longest-serving drummer for Nirvana from late 1990 to early 1994. Profoundly inspirational Dave Grohl quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.

If you’re searching for great quotes by famous musicians that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes by David Bowie, best Demi Lovato quotes and greatest Frank Ocean quotes.

Famous Dave Grohl Quotes

There’s a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more. – Dave Grohl

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat. – Dave Grohl

If you play a Nickleback song backwards, you’ll hear messages from the devil. Even worse, if you play it forwards, you’ll hear Nickleback. – Dave Grohl

No one is you, and that is your power. – Dave Grohl

When you’re young, you’re not afraid of what comes next. You’re excited by it. – Dave Grohl

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days? – Dave Grohl

Most people don’t take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don’t really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It’s that thing that determines what the album sounds like. – Dave Grohl

At school where you a dunce or a teacher’s pet? All of the above. I was stupid so they thought I was cute. – Dave Grohl

If it weren’t for the Beatles, I would not be a musician. – Dave Grohl

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization. – Dave Grohl

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself. – Dave Grohl

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work. – Dave Grohl

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something. – Dave Grohl

The most important thing for me is my family, and my health and happiness, and making sure everyone’s cool. – Dave Grohl

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine – it kinda sucks the life out of music. – Dave Grohl

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If you fucking like something, like it. That’s what’s wrong with our generation: that residual punk rock guilt, like, “You’re not supposed to like that. That’s not fucking cool.” Don’t fucking think it’s not cool to like Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” It is cool to like Britney Spears’ “Toxic”! Why the fuck not? Fuck you! That’s who I am, goddamn it! That whole guilty pleasure thing is full of fucking shit. – Dave Grohl

Whenever I say I made a record in the garage, people just assume that I have, like, a Lear jet parked in there or something. But really there’s old luggage, a couple of bikes. It’s big enough to put one minivan in. That’s it. No dartboard. I’m so not macho. – Dave Grohl

Being in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life. – Dave Grohl

No one is you and that is your biggest power. – Dave Grohl

It was supposed to be gross, and now it’s gorgeous. – Dave Grohl

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better. – Dave Grohl

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music. – Dave Grohl

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family. – Dave Grohl

Because you have things like ‘American Idol’ and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock. – Dave Grohl

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be. – Dave Grohl

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do. – Dave Grohl

When you’re thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side. – Dave Grohl

Everybody now thinks that Nashville is the coolest city in America. – Dave Grohl

Trust me, the sweet sting of a love refused is powerful enough to send any scribe scrambling for pen and paper.”
― Dave Grohl

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it’s just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it. – Dave Grohl

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started. – Dave Grohl

What’s the last thing a drummer says in a band? ‘Hey guys, why don’t we try one of my songs?’ – Dave Grohl

I think the producers or whoever’s doing the show are tripping so hard. They must be on acid. They live in this, like, weird grass mound and there’s this ‘sun’ in the sky with this little baby’s face that’s just, like, bleaaargh-aarghagh. It’s just so totally insane. It’s such an acid thing, man. For kids! – Dave Grohl

I’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song. – Dave Grohl

I think I’m scared a lot. I’m scared of almost everything. And I’m constantly trying to work my way through each obstacle, whether it’s a present, past, or future relationship. – Dave Grohl

If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s gathering people together to do something fun. – Dave Grohl

Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. If you really feel like that barrier is gone, you become Freddie Mercury. I consider him the greatest frontman of all time. Like, it’s funny? You’d imagine that Freddie was more than human, but… You know how he controlled Wembley Stadium at Live Aid in 1985? He stood up there and did his vocal warm ups with the audience. Something that intimate, where they realize, ‘Oh yeah, he’s just a f***ing dude.’ – Dave Grohl

Ramones or AC/DC are two bands that have managed to keep their signature sound and their signature formula for years and years and album after album after album, without it seeming like a dead-end street. – Dave Grohl

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music. – Dave Grohl

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I’ve never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band. – Dave Grohl

Sometimes I forget that I’ve aged. My head and my heart seem to play this cruel trick on me, deceiving me with the false illusion of youth by greeting the world every day through the idealistic, mischievous eyes of a rebellious child finding happiness and appreciation in the most basic, simple things. – Dave Grohl

Nothing’s going to keep me from making music. If I were in the want-ads in the back of the paper or playing to six people at a coffee shop, I’d still love to make music. – Dave Grohl

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves. – Dave Grohl

It’s not until recently that I could even imagine myself as an adult. But these kids today, they look at me like I’m Neil Young. Nirvana is the band their parents listen to. – Dave Grohl

There’s nothing I’d rather do than make music. It’s the love of my life. – Dave Grohl

Mom, thanks for letting me drop out of high school. Haha! – Dave Grohl

From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time. – Dave Grohl

Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life. – Dave Grohl

I’ve experienced great things; I’ve experienced great tragedies. I’ve done almost everything I could possibly ever imagine doing, but I just know that there’s more. – Dave Grohl

That’s one of the greatest things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons. – Dave Grohl

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down. – Dave Grohl

I always loved writing songs – writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally, the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it. – Dave Grohl

We only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters. – Dave Grohl

I listen to boy band music before I have to fire someone. – Dave Grohl

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you’re moved by the fact that it’s real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like ‘Let It Be’ or ‘Long and Winding Road’ or a song like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ or ‘Roxanne,’ any of those songs. They sound like people making music. – Dave Grohl

There’s something about heartbreak that makes for great music, but the same could be said for Jägermeister. Hangovers make for great music, too. – Dave Grohl

That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons. – Dave Grohl

You will only be great at things you love to do don’t pursue a career in something you hate to do. – Dave Grohl

I think that if you’re passionate about something and you’re driven and you’re focused, then you can pretty much do anything that you want to do in life. – Dave Grohl

You look up to your heroes and you shouldn’t be intimidated by them; you should be inspired by them. – Dave Grohl

When something good comes your way, you better feel fortunate, because it doesn’t last forever. – Dave Grohl

How do I stay humble? Because I’m the best at being humble. – Dave Grohl

Life is just too damn short to let someone else’s opinion steer the wheel, – Dave Grohl

Be someone’s light when they are hopeless. – Dave Grohl

That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons. – Dave Grohl

To women, drummers seem like these adorable, sexy Neanderthals, but lead singers seem mysterious and dangerous. So, while the lead singers all want to be David Bowie, floating into parties and being the center of attention, it’s the drummers who are in the corner doing keg stands and breaking tables. Usually it’s the drummers who get the fun-loving ladies and the singers who get the nutcases. – Dave Grohl

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief. – Dave Grohl

Never lose faith in real rock and roll music. Never lose faith in that. You might have to look a little harder, but it’s always going to be there. – Dave Grohl

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing. – Dave Grohl

The human element of making music is what’s most important. – Dave Grohl

What we feel most comfortable doing is playing loud, screaming rock songs. – Dave Grohl

Just the other day someone threw a bra duct-taped to a tennis ball. I just stood there, playing guitar, thinking how this was totally premeditated. Some girl sat around inventing a way to get her bra onstage from 40 rows back. – Dave Grohl

There’s some things in life that you really consider to be priceless. – Dave Grohl

Heavy Metal would not exist without Led Zeppelin, and if it did, it would suck. – Dave Grohl

Always have the highest bar for yourself. – Dave Grohl

Don’t look at the poster on your wall and think ‘I could never do that.’ Look at the poster on your wall and think ‘I’m gonna do that!’ – Dave Grohl

Wow, I get to wake up again? Ok. You have to make good with what you’ve got. – Dave Grohl

I don’t think of Kurt as ‘Kurt Cobain from Nirvana’. I think of him as ‘Kurt’. It’s something that comes back all the time. Almost every day. – Dave Grohl

There’s always gonna be rock n’ roll bands, there’s always gonna be kids that love rock n’ roll records, and there will always be rock n’ roll. – Dave Grohl

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs? – Dave Grohl

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‘Heart Shaped Box’ and stuff on ‘In Utero’ just happened that way. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener. – Dave Grohl

It’s tough to go to sleep at night, and I wake up after five hours because I feel like I’m wasting time. I just sit up at night and think about what I can do next. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

There’s a reason why the Foo Fighters don’t blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that’s hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn’t really come up, or it just hasn’t felt right. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America – land of the free, home of the brave. – Dave Grohl

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‘Hey, I wrote a song.’ – Dave Grohl

Give me something to assemble, I won’t look at the directions, I’ll try to figure it out by myself. It’s why I love Ikea furniture. – Dave Grohl

There are times when I feel like I’m a traveling minister. I’m trying to go out and get kids to pick-up yard sale instruments and change the world. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

When digital technology started becoming the norm, you’ve got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won’t last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear. – Dave Grohl

I dropped out of high school and I couldn’t go to college ’cause I wasn’t smart enough, so I’d resigned myself to loading trucks and playing punk rock on the weekends. – Dave Grohl

I’m not into albums that are meant to sound perfect, – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

I’m so not macho. It’s crazy. My man cave is so not a man cave. – Dave Grohl

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they’re stuck in that safe place. – Dave Grohl

There weren’t a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn’t have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

Joining a band without ever having really met the people before, you just want to be musically powerful. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

‘Some Kind Of Monster’ is such a nightmare for any musician to watch because you’re watching a band be honest to each other. Not a good idea, man! – Dave Grohl

I had a Super Grover doll growing up. Super Grover was very clumsy, he wasn’t very good-looking. But in his own way he’d always save the day. – Dave Grohl

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

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids. – Dave Grohl

If I ever felt like I was getting lost in the hurricane that was storming around Nirvana, I’d just go back to Virginia. – Dave Grohl

There’s poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don’t like doing what people expect me to do. – Dave Grohl

I once received a cape that was made from the little purple bags that Crown Royal Whisky comes in. – Dave Grohl

Dude, maybe not everyone loves ‘Glee.’ Me included. I watched 10 minutes and it wasn’t my thing. – Dave Grohl

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

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death. – Dave Grohl

The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically. – Dave Grohl

Who’s to say what’s a good voice and not a good voice? – Dave Grohl

Actually, I didn’t start sweating until I had children. – Dave Grohl

It’s terrifying to play your favorite band’s song in front of your favorite band. – Dave Grohl

I’m kind of claustrophobic… It’s not even like enclosed spaces. It’s like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can’t get out. – Dave Grohl

Cause when you’re sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

It’s a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that’s a good thing. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

‘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.’ – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

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

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school. Give me something to assemble, I won’t look at the directions, I’ll try to figure it out by myself. It’s why I love Ikea furniture. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

No, there’s something about the sing-song cadence of children’s music that has its place in rock. – Dave Grohl

From the time that ‘Nevermind’ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years. – Dave Grohl

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. – Dave Grohl

Usually after making a record, you imagine it to be your last, … You just feel tapped out. This time, for whatever reason, this album inspired me to keep writing. It made me feel like we still have good albums in us, that we’re still capable of making good records for years to come. – Dave Grohl

When he comes in and listens to a song that you’re asking him to play on and he turns to you and says, ‘Hmm, that chorus goes a little long, doesn’t it?’ you (acquiesce): ‘Yes it does. Yes, of course, Mr. John Paul Jones, sir. You are absolutely correct.’ It really was one of the most special things that happened to me in my entire life. Sitting down with an acoustic guitar, teaching John Paul Jones a song I’d written while he’s playing it on piano – it was too much. – Dave Grohl

We’d pull into small towns, and thousands of people would come to be rescued by this man. – Dave Grohl

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