The Untold Truth Of Dave Grohl

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

As front man of the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl is one of the few still-performing artists in music history to enjoy sustained success and popularity for more than two decades. He's such a talented songwriter, guitarist, and singer, one could almost forget his five brief but extremely influential years as the drummer of Nirvana. Well, okay, nobody is ever going to forget that, but such is the awesomeness of Grohl, a musician who has insisted on playing every instrument in a song more than once.

And yet, despite being this famous for this long — and somehow remaining relatively humble about it — there's still a lot about Grohl's past that goes under-reported. From kind notes to trapped miners to a family connection to President Taft, and even coming close to being left out of that famous "Unplugged" performance, here are some things you may not have known, or forgotten, about Dave Grohl.

Widely recognized as one of the best drummers of his generation, Dave Grohl was in high demand after the sudden, tragic breakup of Nirvana, which followed the death by suicide of Kurt Cobain. He soon found himself linked with not one, but two of the biggest vacancies in music at the time.

First was obviously Nirvana, but the second was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. In 1994, Petty was in desperate need of a guy behind the kit, after the departure of original drummer Stan Lynch. Grohl auditioned and, just to up the pressure, the audition was the Heartbreakers' appearance on "Saturday Night Live." Grohl, as you might expect, killed it, and Petty later offered him a permanent job, but Grohl declined.

So why didn't Grohl join Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? Simple: he turned it down out of a desire to make his own music. You know you're awesome when you can say no to the chance to work with Tom Petty, and it was the right move.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org

After getting off the road with the Heartbreakers, Dave Grohl booked some time at Robert Lang Studios in Seattle to lay down demos for songs he'd written. Grohl wound up recording an entire album, and he did it about 99.9 percent by himself. He played every instrument on every song, except for a single guitar part on the song "X-Static," contributed by his friend Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs.

The demo was solid, but Grohl wanted to stay anonymous and keep "Foo Fighters" an anonymous thing as well. But fate had something different in mind — to help that something along, the A&R guy who had signed Nirvana to Geffen, Gary Gersh, had since become president of Capitol Records. Grohl got a record deal, and the first, self-titled album by Foo Fighters (a World War II-era term for UFOs — Grohl was reading a lot of books about such things at the time) was released in the summer of 1995.

Of course, Grol isn't a ten-armed, ten-legged god, so to replicate the songs live, he had to hire a band. He recruited former Nirvana touring guitarist (and ex-member of legendary punk band The Germs) Pat Smear, along with two Seattle musicians: bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith of the just-disbanded Sunny Day Real Estate.

Despite being one of the best drummers in the world, Dave Grohl primarily sings and plays guitar for the Foo Fighters. That means some poor guy has to play drums in front of Grohl. That's a lot of pressure, and it was too much for original Foos drummer William Goldsmith to take. While recording the band's second album, "The Color and the Shape," in early 1997, Grohl just wasn't getting the right sound from Goldsmith. He reportedly required 96 takes for just one song, and 13 hours worth of takes on another.

Eventually, they finished the album, or at least, Goldsmith thought they had. That's because Grohl went ahead and re-recorded a lot of the drum parts. In fact, he only kept Goldsmith's work on two tracks. Shortly thereafter, a frustrated Goldsmith left the band, to be replaced with Alanis Morissette's touring drummer, Taylor Hawkins, who tragically died in 2022.

If anyone ever has any doubt about Dave Grohl's innate musical talent, consider this: Not only did Dave Grohl play nearly every guitar part on the first Foo Fighters album, the erstwhile drum god had to teach himself to play guitar, too. Grohl never had any sort of formal guitar training, even admitting that he still doesn't know what chords he's playing on songs like "Everlong." But it works for him, because of how he plays the guitar. 

Basically, he mastered the six-string by approaching it like a set of drums. As he explained to Rolling Stone, "The low E string is the kick drum. The A and D strings are snares. The G, B, and high E are the cymbals." Looking at it that way makes playing a guitar seem a lot simpler. Plus, it provides insight into just how melodic his drumming really was, and still is.

Dave Grohl has been married to his wife, Jordyn Blum, since 2003, and they have three daughters together. His romantic life hasn't always been so rosy, however, and Grohl's exes have a few things to say about him. He was in a high-profile alternative rock-royalty relationship in 1998 with Louise Post of Veruca Salt, until he dumped her via long-distance phone call, simply because he wanted to hook up with Winona Ryder. What's sadder: Post got the call right before a Veruca concert, and she got so drunk, she could barely play.

Those bad romances came in the wake of Grohl's first marriage, which ended in divorce in 1997. Grohl acknowledges that his split with his first wife, Jennifer Youngblood, was because of his own infidelities. But it also led to another, more platonic, split. Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear is very good friends with Youngblood. When the divorce happened, he sided with Youngblood, and so much so that he left the Foo Fighters for a few years, although he later returned.

Grohl's long-term marriage to Blum hit the rocks in September 2024, when he revealed to the world via social media that he had joined the long list of celebrities who had secret kids. As of March 2025, the status of the relationship between Blum and Grohl is still in flux.

In January 2009, Dave Grohl celebrated his 40th birthday at the kitschy Medieval Times theme restaurant. During that bash, Grohl took the opportunity to set himself up on a "blind date" with two party guests: former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones, and Queens of the Stone Age guitarist/frontman Josh Homme. The next day, the three musicians entered a recording studio, where musical magic occurred. The trio dubbed themselves Them Crooked Vultures, and proceeded to make an album in complete secrecy.

"We knew what was happening," Grohl told Classic Rock of the sessions. "And we knew how special it was and how good it was, and that we were doing something meaningful ... it was just three guys getting together to play. It was free-form and it was improvisational." The album was well received, and the trio decided to do some live dates, including a sold-out tour and headlining spot at the Coachella music festival. 

Suddenly, Grohl found himself in another successful band. "The project went from being an idea to a reality to something a lot bigger than what I originally imagined it to be," he admitted, recalling how everything snowballed. "I sort of thought it would just be a studio project that we'd do kind of quickly. And then it turned into an eight-month-long recording process and an actual tour. Now it's a whole other experience." 

As a member of Them Crooked Vultures, with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, Dave Grohl knows supergroups. But if we're talking supergroups, let's talk about one of the biggest rock assemblages of all time, and one that follows the literal definition of big.

In 2015, an Italian man named Fabio Zaffagnini organized a project called the Rockin' 1000—a thousand guitarists got together and played the same song, all at once: Foo Fighters' 1999 hit "Learn to Fly." Grohl (in his best attempt at Italian) posted a thank-you video on the Foo Fighters' Facebook page, and then showed up for a concert in Zaffagnini's hometown of Cesena, Italy, a few months later. What's more, he invited members of the Rockin' 1000 up on the stage for the band's performance of "Learn to Fly."

Foo Fighters are one of the few bands in recent memory that transcend genre or demographics; it seems like everybody loves them, even grumpy old David Letterman. The band made its TV debut on Letterman's "Late Show" in 1995, when it played "This is a Call," and in a fitting tribute, in 2015 he invited the band members to be the last-ever musical guests on his last-ever show. He had but one request: play their 1997 hit "Everlong."

So why the Foos, and why "Everlong"? Because, as Letterman said (via Billboard), "these people saved my life." He explained that "Everlong" was his favorite song, and it helped keep him happy and inspired while he recovered from heart surgery in 2000. Moreover, when Letterman asked the band to play his first show back after his bypass surgery, they cancelled a bunch of tour dates to honor his request.

The Beaconsfield mine collapse in Tasmania made headlines around the world in 2006, as two miners were trapped underground. Rescue teams were able to pass down food and objects of comfort through a narrow hole to the two men. One of them, Brant Webb, requested an iPod loaded up with the Foo Fighters album "In Your Honor."

Dave Grohl heard about this, and actually penned a note that was read to the miners later on. It read (via NME), "My heart is with you both, and I want you to know that when you come home, there's two tickets to any Foos show, anywhere, and two cold beers waiting for you. Deal?"

This already-happy story has a very happy ending: In October 2007, the Foo Fighters capped a concert at the Sydney Opera House in Australia with backstage beers with Webb and his wife. Grohl had another gift for the miners: He wrote them an instrumental piece called "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners," and it appeared on the Foo Fighters album "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace."

Dave Grohl drums, he plays guitar, he sings, and he's pretty funny, too. Foo Fighters videos are usually comedic, such as the Mentos parody of "Big Me" or the accidental drugging of a flight crew by Jack Black and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D in "Learn to Fly." Grohl and Black are actually friends and frequent collaborators — Grohl once spent seven hours in the makeup chair to play a gigantic, terrifying Satan called "Beelzeboss" in the Tenacious D movie "The Pick of Destiny."

One other Black/Grohl joint that you probably haven't seen is the 2003 video for the Foos song "Low," because MTV banned it for content. It features Black and Grohl as a couple of good ol' country boys who check into a hotel room, get drunk, wreck the place, and then put on women's clothing and have a torrid night of passionate lovemaking, which is all caught on a night-vision camera, Paris Hilton-style.

Believe it or not, there are some stars who can't stand Dave Grohl. After the death of Kurt Cobain and the end of Nirvana, there was no love lost between Dave Grohl and Cobain's widow, Courtney Love. For 20 years, Grohl and Love took turns leveling shots at each other in public—Grohl called Love an "ugly f***ing b*tch" during a concert in 2002 (via The Guardian), and Love said Grohl has been "taking money from my child for years." Love also once claimed that Grohl tried to romance that very child, Frances Bean Cobain. Grohl didn't even dignify that one with a response.

The fighting extended to the courtroom when, in 2001, Love sued Grohl over Nirvana song rights. The other surviving Nirvana member, Krist Novoselic, then countersued, remarking (via The Guardian) that Love was acting purely out of a need "to further her own career goals, not to protect Cobain's legacy as she claims." Another suit in 2002 involved Love unsuccessfully trying to block the release of an old, unfinished Nirvana track called "You Know You're Right."

Legal matters were later settled, and in recent years, the hostility has subsided to the point where Grohl and Love actually seem to be friends. They even embraced when Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. 

Dave Grohl's life wasn't all head-banging and killing it on the drums. He grew up in Virginia in a modest home, and his parents weren't musicians or rock aficionados. His mom taught English, and his dad worked closely with local Republican politicians.

James Grohl ended up writing speeches and running the campaign of Senator Robert Taft Jr. The Senator came from a long line of politicians. His father, Robert Sr., was known as "Mr. Republican," and his grandfather was President of the United States. Yes, Dave Grohl's dad worked with the lineage of our nation's fattest president.

James Grohl worked for years with Taft and even wrote for the Republican National Convention. After Taft finally lost his Senate seat, Grohl was offered a position working for Bob Dole. He turned it down, which worked fine for Grohl since Dole went on to lose a vice-presidential bid and later get crushed by Clinton in the 1996 presidential election. Though Dave Grohl was always liberal and his father a staunch conservative, it didn't cause too many family quarrels.

Always a huge music fan, Dave Grohl wanted to reach out to his idols at a young age. Ian MacKaye, the punk icon who fronted Minor Threat and Fugazi, was one of Grohl's favorites. So, at 14, he sent him a fan letter. But Grohl, even as a young teen, wasn't going to put out some sappy, butt-kissing fanboy letter in the mail. Grohl was too practical.

The fan letter, posted to the Foo Fighters' X (formerly known as Twitter) page, read, "Good thrash. So I was wondering if you could give me some numbers of people to get in touch with. It would help. Thanx." Simple, to the point, and all business. Grohl even left his phone number and specific hours in which to call (3-10). If MacKaye wanted to hit him up at 8 a.m., that wasn't going to work for teenage Grohl. Ian MacKaye kept the letter all these years.

Though Dave Grohl had rock aspirations from a young age, he wound up in the rock industry before getting into the music business, and in the most literal sense. Grohl worked manual labor at a nursery in Virginia, where he had to physically break rocks all day. Though he was playing drums at the time, he didn't think it could be a career, and his aspirations were far more mudane than becoming a global rock star.

Grohl told Rolling Stone, "At one point, I thought, 'I know how to play drums. I'll learn to read music, become a session drummer and from that money, I'll put myself back through school." Then he could move up to his real dream: getting a regular job in Washington, D.C. Thankfully, Grohl committed to music, and though he may never sit at a desk, he's still done pretty well for himself.

Dave Grohl was around for Nirvana's breakout success, but wasn't the first drummer. He was the sixth. First was Bob McFadden, seldom spoken of in Nirvana history. Then came Aaron Burckhard, Dale Crover, and Dave Foster. For two years, Chad Channing stuck around but was replaced by Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters.

When Grohl auditioned, Peters didn't know he was potentially being replaced. But Grohl impressed the band with his maniacally energized performance with the band Scream and brought the heat again when he came to audition privately. Grohl didn't even need to finish his first song before the band knew he was the perfect fit. Kurt Cobain gave Peters a call to tell him he'd no longer be in the band. It came as a surprise since weeks earlier, they were planning their European tour. According to Paul Brannigan's book "This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl," Cobain wasn't much clearer with Grohl's happy news: "I don't remember them saying 'you're in the band.' We just continued."

When Nirvana hit it big, it was insane. Though the band had been working for years, its incredible success came practically overnight. Perhaps unsurprisingly to those fans of the famously well-grounded musician, the sudden influx of cash didn't change Dave Grohl. He told Rolling Stone, "When Nirvana got popular, I was renting a house with a friend. I had a futon, a lamp and a dresser for my clothes. Ten million records later, I was still in that back room with the futon, lamp, and dresser."

By now, Grohl has moved on to owning an actual mattress but never went crazy with rock 'n' roll purchases. He owns quite a few guitars, a nice house, but no golden Grohl statues or a parade of fancy cars. Grohl says he doesn't like having tons of things around. "I don't know what else to do." He says. "I get lost."

Though Dave Grohl was the only drummer that Kurt Cobain was really happy with, it didn't mean they always got along. In rehearsals for MTV's "Unplugged," Cobain didn't like Grohl's drumming. Not one to hold back, Grohl was a little loud for the intimate setting, and the lead singer almost banned Grohl from the show completely.

As "Unplugged" producer Alex Coletti recalled to MTV (via Loudwire), "Kurt wasn't happy with the way rehearsals were going; he didn't like the way Dave sounded playing drums with sticks ... He's a heavy hitter, and the thing about 'Unplugged,' especially with rock bands, is if the drummer doesn't really, really get it under control and tries to play a rock show on a smaller kit, then it brings the show to a bad-sounding electric show instead of a good-sounding acoustic show."

Instead of kicking Grohl out of the studio, Coletti got him a pair of swizzle sticks and wire brushes. Though those both sound like some kind of candy-making tools, they're drumsticks that allow the drummer to play softer without losing intensity. Grohl accepted his new tools and played the show without a hitch.

While in Nirvana, Dave Grohl didn't get a chance to do much songwriting or figure out what his solo musical voice could be. But before Nirvana, Grohl played around with his own band. Grohl would record drum tracks with a friend on an old 8-track player and decided to try recording a whole song — drums, bass, guitar, and vocals — on his own.

That song led to an offer to record his own album on a small cassettes-only label called Simple Machines, run by Jenny Toomey. "When she asked me if I wanted to do it," Grohl said to TimeOut, "I said, yeah, sure, but I don't want to call it the Dave Grohl Band. Let's call it something else. Oh, I called it Late!, because I'm an idiot and I thought it would be funny to say to everybody, 'Sorry, we're Late!'"

Those tracks, plus a few more recorded in 1991, made up the one and only album from Late!, "Pocketwatch," which was released a year after "Nevermind." The label was so small, Toomey had to copy tapes from a double-decker boom box at her house whenever supplies of "Pocketwatch" ran low. The album had a small following at the time, but the work was great practice for Grohl's eventual one-man recording of the first Foo Fighters album.

"Big Me" is still one of the best music videos of all time. The sweet song provides the background to a bunch of hilarious Mentos parody ads. Sadly, people took the video a little too seriously and thought it would be cool to chuck Mentos at the stage whenever the band played "Big Me" live. Dave Grohl said (via Gigwise), "Every time we played it, it would just start raining Mentos, and them motherf*****s hurt." 

After years of playing the song, the Mentos shower didn't stop. "We did a show in Canada and, in the middle of the song, someone threw a pack, and it hit me right in the face. I was so pissed, I picked it up and said, 'It's been 10 f***ing years since that video.'" So, the fervent fans ruined it for everyone and now the band refuses to play the song live. Thanks a lot, Mentos!

If you go to the Grammys, you figure you might pick up an award or a gift basket, but probably not a huge knife from a country singer.

Around 2012, Dave Grohl met Zac Brown for the first time. As Grohl related to Artisan News, he was working on a project where he recorded things all around the nation, and Brown volunteered up his Nashville studio if Grohl ever wanted to check it out. They exchanged numbers, and that night, Brown texted, "Also, if you're into tactical knives, I can hook you up." Quite a segue from two musicians talking about studio space, but nice of Brown to offer up his knowledge.

Grohl wasn't too enthused about learning more about the world of dangerous knives and texted back, "I can't wait to see you, but don't be bringing that s**t to the GRAMMYs, they'll never let you in the front door." Lo and behold, the next night in the audience of the Grammys, Brown sat right in front of Grohl and handed him a great big knife. All in plain view of TV cameras and famous musicians.

If you came across Dave Grohl's home today, you'd probably be surprised. Though it's a fairly large home, it certainly doesn't compare to celebrity mansions in Beverly Hills. There are no guards, gates, or high fences. In fact, there's a little sign out front that simply says: "The Grohls."

It's even more surprising that Grohl has such a simple family home in the Los Angeles area because, according to Paul Brannigan's "This Is a Call: The Life and Times of Dave Grohl," he used to hate the place. "It's kind of funny for a while," he said, "then annoying, then depressing, finally it gets terrifying because you start wondering if these people are rubbing off on you. It's like one giant frenzy of aspiration and lies."

Today, Grohl doesn't technically live in Los Angeles but Encino, about 15 miles away from the city. Still, he didn't think much of the suburb either. He used to describe Encino as a town where "porn stars become grocery clerks and rock stars come to die." He clearly changed his tune because Grohl hasn't gone anywhere to die. He has a small studio in his home and owns a larger studio about ten minutes away.

"Montage of Heck," made by Brett Morgen (pictured above), is an in-depth, family-approved documentary of Kurt Cobain's life. Released in 2015 and nominated for no less than seven Emmy awards, it has received praise from some unlikely admirers. Selena Gomez, who has named Cobain as a teenage obsession of hers, told NME that she has watched it at least 10 times. But Dave Grohl was not first in line to see it: His wife turned on the film while he was lying in bed, and Grohl couldn't stand to watch it.

"All the footage of him as a child, I think might make me sad, and then the dark stuff at the end I think would bum me out," Grohl told The Washington Post. Though he did watch a little piece of it, he quickly rolled over and went to bed rather than watch the fall of his good friend.

Virginia Grohl, Dave's mom, decided to talk about the life of the Grohls from a mother's perspective. Titled "From the Cradle to the Stage," the book recalls memories of Dave's childhood, his growing stardom, and interviews other parents of rock star kids. You get a pretty good mix of stories in her interviews with the parents of HAIM, Michael Stipe, and Dr. Dre.

Grohl wrote a sweet message on Instagram to his mother as her book debuted. "Every Musician remembers his first lesson. ... Mine? Well ... there was no classroom, no conservatory. No sheet music or baton. No ... It was in the front seat of a beige Ford Maverick, rolling through Springfield, Virginia, on a sweltering hot summer day in 1975. My teacher? My Mother. Ms. Virginia Hanlon Grohl."

Not only does Dave Grohl know his way around a recording studio, he's also skilled in the kitchen. In fact, he's declared his love of cooking in interviews. In a 2021 video posted to social media, he revealed to Food Network that asparagus is his go-to vegetable. "I love to grill asparagus," he said, revealing he's prone to boil it briefly and then throw it on a grill. "Asparagus, that's my jam!" he added.

According to Grohl, both his parents were excellent cooks, and he picked up kitchen skills from them. "I don't know, I think when you move out of your parents' house and you're living alone, you just sort of learn how, just sort of learn out of necessity along the way," he explained. "But maybe in the last 10 years is when I started getting really, really into it."

As Grohl said in an interview for the now-defunct PopSmear magazine (via FooArchive), he tends to do his cooking over an open flame. "When I'm hungry I just want to throw it on the grill, sear the outside of it and get it in my f***ing body as soon as possible," he joked, declaring himself more a fan of steak than chicken. "I like strips, I like porterhouses, and I've been known to do a nice Delmonico every now and then. Porterhouses are kind of my trip."

In early 2022, Dave Grohl and his Foo Fighters bandmates starred in their first-ever motion picture. Blending comedy and supernatural horror, "Studio 666" focused on Grohl and the Foos recording an album in a haunted LA mansion. Grohl revealed to Variety that he'd been approached years earlier by a movie studio wanting to make a Foo Fighters horror movie. "And I responded by saying, 'That's the stupidest f***ing idea I've ever heard in my entire life,'" Grohl recalled. 

Eventually, he began reconsidering what he'd once considered stupidity. "Soon, it turned into a full-length feature film, and the whole thing ballooned into a project that we had never imagined," he marveled.

News of "Studio 666" first emerged in November 2021, and came as a complete surprise to Grohl's fans since the whole thing had been shot in secrecy. "I'll tell you what the plan was, and whatever, I'm giving it away finally because I kept this f***ing thing a secret for so long," Grohl told Rolling Stone, pointing to hints that he and the other band members had dropped in interviews about strange paranormal occurrences while recording "Medicine at Midnight." "We were trying to make a big deal out of the fact that we had recorded in a haunted house and it would just be bam and drop this f***ing movie out of nowhere," he explained. 

Dave Grohl has always had eclectic musical tastes, which came to the forefront during his days as Nirvana's drummer. Back in 1993, recording sessions were booked to record the follow-up for the band's wildly successful "Nevermind" album. One of the songs recorded — albeit one that didn't make the cut for the resulting album, "In Utero" — was "Onwards Into Countless Battles," a cover of a track from Swedish death metal outfit Unleashed. Similar to the process he would later utilize for the first Foo Fighters album, Grohl played all the instruments; Kurt Cobain was enlisted to add vocals. "This is exactly what makes Dave amazing," Foo Fighters fan Igor Avidon told Kerrang! "Who else covers a Swedish death metal song while playing in a grunge band in the early '90s? Only Dave." 

In an interview with Sweden's Close-Up magazine (via Blabbermouth), Grohl reflected on how he'd come to cover Unleashed, recalling that the band was in Brazil at the time. A studio had been booked, but Grohl was the only one who turned up. "Nobody was there, so I took this riff and recorded it on my own," he said.

While the recording never saw the light of day, it nearly emerged as a bonus track on the Nirvana box set. Ultimately, though, Grohl felt that an Unleashed song really had no place in a Nirvana collection. "It would have been really funny," he added. "It was THAT close."

In addition to his work as a musician, Dave Grohl has carved out a whole other niche as a documentary filmmaker. Grohl first got behind the camera to direct Foo Fighters' music videos, and made his doc debut in 2013 with "Sound City," a critically acclaimed film about the famed Los Angeles recording studio. His next documentary was even more ambitious, the 2014 Showtime docuseries "Sonic Highways." In that eight-episode series, he and the rest of the Foo Fighters visited a different city in each episode, where they'd explore its musical heritage and record a song using lyrics drawn from Grohl's experience in each locale. "Sonic Highways" went on to receive two Emmy nominations. 

After a few years away from directing, he re-entered the documentary game with gusto in 2021, with the release of "What Drives Us," a film in which rockers, ranging from Ringo Starr to AC/DC singer Brian Johnston and Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea, share their early experiences driving from gig to gig in a van. Then there was "From Cradle to Stage," in which he and other rock stars share the childhood experiences that shaped them. 

As he explained while appearing on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," interviewing fellow rockers for "What Drives Us" came naturally to him. "The advantage that I have when interviewing musicians is that we speak the same language," he said. "Except for [Aerosmith frontman] Steven [Tyler]. That's another planet."

At a certain point, Dave Grohl became enamored of Ghost, a bizarre, theatrical Satanic doom-metal band from Sweden. His fandom took a professional turn when he stepped in to produce the group's 2013 EP, "If You Have Ghost," which included unexpected covers of songs from artists ranging from Swedish popsters ABBA to Depeche Mode.

As one Ghost band member with the stage name of a "Nameless Ghoul" recounted for Artisan News, the band was slated to record some B-sides in Nashville when it wound up meeting Grohl at a music festival. "We both have understandings of pop, classic rock, extreme metal, and punk," they told Music Radar. "Very quickly, we were saying, 'Wow, it'd be great to do something together someday.' And as luck would have it, Dave said, 'Well, I just happen to have a break right now.'"

Grohl proved his reputation for moving fast, and the album was completed at a breakneck pace. "Dave had an incredible work ethic and a lot of energy," said the Nameless Ghoul. "He worked for 10 hours a day and really got stuff done. That was pretty inspiring."

Dave Grohl has made musical cameos in various artists' songs, including David Bowie's cover of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You" (appearing on 2002's "Heathen" album), The Bangles' 2003 track "Grateful," and Paul McCartney's raging rocker, "Cut Me Some Slack." Of all those appearances, however, arguably the most unexpected was Grohl's drum contribution to a Michael Jackson track. 

That song is "(I Can't Make It) Another Day," a collaboration between Lenny Kravitz and the King of Pop that appeared on "Michael," which was released after Jackson's tragic death. As Grohl told Classic Rock, he met Kravitz at an award ceremony. After exchanging numbers, Kravitz left him a message. "So I call him up, and he says: 'Do you want to play drums on a Michael Jackson song? There's this song that me and Michael worked on in 1992, but it never came out, and I want to finish it. And I'd love to have your huge drums on the chorus,'" Grohl recalled. 

Working with producer Butch Vig, Grohl recorded what he felt to be an epic drum track for the song. Time passed with no communication. Then he heard the song. "'You know what they used? One snare hit. That's it. I don't know who's playing drums on it, but it ain't me," Grohl insisted. "It says: Featuring Dave Grohl.' And it's like: 'It does? I can't hear me in that!' It's funny."

Dave Grohl is not without his hobbies, and he discussed one of them in a 2003 interview with Australian Kerrang! (via FooArchive). "When I have time off I like skeet shooting," he said. Speaking with Kerrang! (via FooArchive) the previous year, he offered some advice for novice skeet shooters. "Beginners should start with the 20 gauge, because the butt of the gun will throw your shoulder out if you're not used to it," he explained. "My preferred gun is the 12 gauge: an all rounder."

While he's never shot a perfect 25-out-of-25 score, he's come close, once scoring 23. However, he admits he's not particularly competitive when shooting. "It's meant to be fun so afterwards you can have a drink with your buddies. Although the 'clubhouse' is a lot more white trash than a golf clubhouse." He also underscored the importance of being well-versed in gun safety, while comparing shooting at airborne targets to a virtual experience. "It's like a video game ... except you can smell the sulphur," he added. 

His interest in shooting hasn't waned over the years. In 2011, Grohl told Us Weekly, "I love skeet shooting. (And I'm a damn good shot.)"