
Dave Grohl
From Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond by Pushkin Industries
April 28, 2026 · 60 min · Season 6 · Episode 206
About this episode
Justin Richmond interviews Dave Grohl about his extensive career in rock music, including his work with Scream, Nirvana, and Foo Fighters.
The magic of Dave Grohl isn't just that he's one of rock music's great raconteurs, or one of its greatest drummers and frontmen of the last thirty-plus years. It's the sheer number of lives he's gotten to live within rock and roll. Dave started out drumming for Scream , one of DC's great, underrated hardcore bands, running in the same circles as Ian MacKaye and the Dischord crowd. Then he joined Nirvana and more than made his mark in one of the most consequential bands since the Beatles, and an indelible piece of Seattle's music story dates all the way back to Jimi Hendrix and Quincy Jones. And then, as if that weren't enough: Foo Fighters. Which Dave Grohl essentially built by himself — Prince and Stevie Wonder-style — writing and recording nearly every note on the debut alone, save for some guitar from Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs. On today's episode Justin Richmond sits down with Dave at the Foo Fighters' studio to talk about their twelfth album, Your Favorite Toy . But they start somewhere unexpected talking about a song from a cassette-only solo record in 1992 he made under the pseudonym "Late!" You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite songs from…
People in this episode
Host: Justin Richmond
Guest: Dave Grohl
Topics covered
- Dave Grohl's career
- rock music history
- Foo Fighters
- creative process
- DC hardcore scene
- live recording
- community in music
Keywords
- Dave Grohl
- Foo Fighters
- Nirvana
- Scream
- rock music
- creative process
- live recording
- DC hardcore
- music community
- Pocketwatch
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Foo Fighters, Scream, Dischord, Afghan Whigs, Pushkin Industries
Books & works: Your Favorite Toy, Pocketwatch, Late!, Nirvana
More episodes of Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond
- Fania Takes Nueva York | From Our Thing: The Birth of Salsa in Nueva York · June 11, 2026 · 36 min
- The New Pornographers · June 9, 2026 · 54 min
- Mopreme Shakur · June 2, 2026 · 1h 10m
- Hardy · May 26, 2026 · 45 min
- From Robert Margouleff | Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, DEVO, the Synth Revolution and My Life Behind the Music · May 21, 2026 · 12 min
- Robert Margouleff and Mark Mothersbaugh · May 19, 2026 · 1h 4m
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond podcast page.