Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesDave Grohl shared a new entry in his Dave’s True Stories series on Father’s Day with a tribute to his late dad, James Harper Grohl.
In the lengthy post, the Foo Fighters frontman describes his father, who was an award-winning journalist, as a “complicated man of many, sometimes-conflicting layers…A true Renaissance man, yet so conservative that he would sometimes by mistaken in public for the legendary political commentator George Will.”
Grohl goes on to explain how, when he was a teenager, his father forbade him from playing music with his friends due to his poor grades at school — a rule that Grohl did not adhere to. One evening, after the younger Grohl had secretly planned and played his own punk show, James sat his son down and had the “dreaded ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ lecture.”
Later that night, the 16-year-old future Nirvana drummer wrote a letter to his father, explaining that he was leaving home.
“The next day, [my father] called and only said, ‘Don’t ever do that again, David,'” Grohl writes. “Fortunately, I never had to, because from that moment on he recognized that I knew in my heart who I was and who I wanted to be, and that nothing could stop me from becoming that person no matter what.”
“From that day forward, my father and I formed a new dynamic in our relationship,” he continues. “Over the years we developed a friendship based on mutual respect.”
Grohl adds that he’s been thinking more about his father lately as he’s begun to write more amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Just call it ‘kicking the apple back up the hill a bit,'” Grohl muses. “If only he were still around to read it.”
By Josh Johnson
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