Grohl: If my career ended today I'd be happiest man alive

Dave Grohl says if his career ended today, he'd be thrilled with everything he's achieved.

But that doesn’t mean the Foo Fighters mainman is ready to quit anytime soon, and he says he still believes he’s yet to make his best record with the band.

Grohl is going through an even heavier workload than normal for the promotion of the new Foos album Sonic Highways, as its release is tied in with an eight-part documentary series of the same name.

That non-stop work means Grohl is usually too busy to think about anything other than the here and now. But when he does have time to reflect, he says he’s happy with his legacy.

He tells Esquire: “I’m so goddamn busy I can’t spend time thinking about anything outside of what I have to do today. There are times where I will sit down, take a deep breath, drop my shoulders, and I just kind of breathe and deflate. But I’m not kidding—that happens about once a year for three and a half minutes. In that time, I can really appreciate it. I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished.”

The death of Kurt Cobain gave the then Nirvana drummer time to think and realise how important it is to keep moving forward.

He adds: “There’s so much more to look forward to. That’s something I learned after Nirvana was over. When Kurt died, I had this whole new outlook at life, that we’re all so lucky to be here. You can’t take life for granted. It’s short. It’s fragile. And you don’t know when it’s going to be taken away from you.

“So the short time that you’re here? You just have to kick ass the whole time and not look back. That’s basically what I try to do. I’m not ready to stop, but if it all ended today, I’d be the happiest person in the world.”

Sonic Highways is out now and currently sits at no.2 in the UK midweek album charts.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.