David Bowie, one of the most innovative and significant musicians of all time, enjoyed professional success from the late 1960s until his untimely death at the age of 69 in 2016. He got to witness several well-known bands’ performances up close as well as the development of rock & roll music. He shared his thoughts on several performers throughout the years, including Dave Grohl, the drummer for Nirvana and the frontman of Foo Fighters.
What was David Bowie’s opinion on Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl
In a 2000s interview that Media Collection was able to retrieve, David Bowie discussed his relationship with Dave Grohl and their collaboration, saying, “He came to work with me, I enjoyed thoroughly working with him the first time at Madison Square Garden on my birthday. He did the show with me there. He is just so collaborative, he is a very open guy. I like his presence, is very enthusiastic, strong, curious. I like everything about him, he is a very bright spark.”
At David Bowie’s 50th anniversary event at Madison Square Garden in 1997, Dave Grohl made his stage debut alongside the star. Names like Lou Reed (Velvet Underground), Robert Smith (The Cure), Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), and Pat Smear (Foo Fighters/Nirvana) were also present at that show.
Five years following the performance, Dave Grohl collaborated with David Bowie once more, this time on his 23rd studio album, “Heathen,” which was released in 2002. The lead guitarist for Foo Fighters was ultimately given credit for playing the guitar on the song “I’ve Been Waiting For You.”
What Dave Grohl said about David Bowie and his favorite album of the musician
As a lifelong admirer of Bowie’s music, Dave Grohl discussed the significance of the late artist on social media in 2022. He mentioned how he didn’t think David Bowie was real and shared his album of choice from his collection. He said, “I loved David Bowie and his music so much because he was just in his own universe. Not just musically but his aesthetic, his personality. A lot of the Rock and Roll that I listened to when I was young was made by people that seemed human (laughs). Crosby, Stills and Nash, I was a huge fan (of them) when I was young.”
“The Beatles, (they) seemed like four human beings to me. David Bowie did not, (he) seemed like an alien and I enjoyed that. The posters I had on my bedroom wall were like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and things like that. But there was something about Bowie (that I was like) ‘I’m not sure if he is from this planet or not and I dug it’. But then the way that he could sort of shapeshift and go from one thing to the next.”
He added, “I mean, most Bowie purists sort of lean on the early days, but I go to say my favorite Bowie album is ‘Let’s Dance’. It’s just such a masterpiece. As a drummer that was one of the things that inspired me to play the drums. So he was special because he could move back and forth from genre to sound. His image, his aesthetic would change and I don’t think that anybody else could do that as he could.”
The funny e-mail exchanges that David Bowie had with Grohl
During a 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Grohl talked about his collaboration with David Bowie on a track from his album “Heathen.” He invited Bowie to sing a song with him years later, but he got a weird response. Recalling the tale and elucidating Bowie’s quirky sense of humor, Dave Grohl said:
“He was in Los Angeles and I was asked by his guitarist if I wanted to come play drums on a song that he was recording. So I got to record with Bowie. i got to watch him step in front of a microphone, do one take perfectly and the sound out of his mouth was David Bowie, it absolutely blew my mind.”
“Then years later I was asked to do a song for a movie soundtrack. They didn’t want the Foo Fighters, they just wanted me. But I didn’t feel comfortable just doing a solo thing. So I thought ‘Oh, I will do an instrumental track and have someone else sing’. So I contacted Bowie and I said ‘Hey, listen to this thing. Maybe you’d like to sing on it.'”
Time went by and I didn’t hear anything. Finally I got an e-mail back and he said ‘David, I like the instrumental, but this time…’ It was like a Marvel movie kind of thing. So he’s like ‘This is not really my trip, not my genre of film and stuff. I’d love to work with you at some point. But I don’t think that this is the time’. So I’m sitting in my living room reading this like ‘Oh my god, David Bowie writes e-mails”.
Dave continued, “This is blowing my mind right now’. So I immediatly e-mailed back something very polite, I don’t want to take up more of his time. So I said ‘Thanks for responding. I hope you’re well. Take care’. Then one minute later he e-mails back an says ‘Well, that’s settled then. Now f*ck off.’ And I’m like ‘Oh my god. Holy crap. David Bowie just told me to f*ck off’. So I e-mailed back and I hadn’t seen him (for a long time) and I said ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you in another 15 years’ and he goes ‘Not if I see you first'”
“I didn’t know (he was being funny). I was like ‘David Bowie thinks I’m and asshole! So we went back and forth until I realized ‘Oh, he is just being funny!’. He was an incredible guy, we wound up having these really funny e-mail exchanges just out of the blue. Like he would e-mail me like in June and say ‘Well, happy new year’ and I’d be like ‘What?’ So then we’d go back and forth and I’d say ‘Drink someday, yes?’ and he would say ‘ I will, thanks!”
With an estimated 100 million recordings sold globally, Dave Bowie is not just among the most influential performers in history but also among the best-selling musicians of all time. David Byrne of Talking Heads gave him his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 1996.