Bringing up a Foo Fighter

In her new book, From Cradle to Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars, Virginia Grohl documents her son’s whirlwind rise from living in the suburbs to performing for US President Barack Obama and headlining stadium concerts worldwide.

She also shares stories from mothers of other star artists, and the result is a conversational book filled with anecdotes about some of today’s most famous musicians, including from Verna Griffin, the mother of Andre Romelle Young, better known as Dr Dre.

In an interview, Grohl told of her son’s amazement that she spent time chatting with the superstar rapper.

“It’s just sort of difficult getting used to talking to your mom on the phone and she says, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to call Dr Dre,’” she said her son recently told an audience.

Before retiring in 1995, Grohl taught at Poe Intermediate, Thomas Jefferson High, Fairfax High and Annandale High. She specialised in public speaking and English, teaching pupils to analyse the narrative in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and her favourite, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

Her own book, released in April, is a paean to mothers everywhere and their Herculean behind-thescenes efforts to bring their children’s dreams to fruition. A single mother, Grohl wrote, she knew no one else was going to drive young Dave to his concerts at the local community centre near Lake Braddock Secondary School.

To rock fans, Dave Grohl’s story is familiar. He grew up in Fairfax County, played in local punk bands and after dropping out of his third high school, parlayed his prodigious talents on the drums to a tryout with an Aberdeen, Washington, band that soon after he joined became an international sensation. But it all dissolved when lead guitarist and singer Kurt Cobain, addicted to drugs, ended his life with a shotgun blast.

In her book, Virginia Grohl related the tumult of conflicting emotions she faced as a mother after Nirvana ascended to fame overnight.

“The bleak days when the kids go from city to city with just enough money for hot dogs and Slurpees aren’t what mothers of the musician-adventurers fear. It’s that next step, the one where money and fame replace impoverished obscurity. What will all that money be used for?” Grohl wrote. “We had all heard about ‘sex and drugs and rock and roll.’ Was it true? I knew about all the pot smoking. That wasn’t alarming. Most of my high school students (and, if truth be told, quite a few of their teachers) were doing that. But David had vowed he would never use cocaine or heroin. I believed him.”

But then Cobain succumbed to his tormenting demons, Virginia Grohl wrote, and Nirvana disintegrated.

“As the gold and platinum records piled up, his will deteriorated. Overdoses and cancelled shows and tours replaced the thrilling firsts of big festivals that drew thousands of fans,” Grohl wrote. “Three short, dramatic years – that was all. In the end, one gunshot. Searing pain. Irreversible loss. The music stopped.”

Although despondent in the aftermath, Dave Grohl turned back to music. What started as a oneman band transformed into the Foo Fighters.

“He had a quick and unpredicted period of being a rock star, yet that wasn’t ever the goal, and it wasn’t the end- game either,” Virginia Grohl said. “So he went back to playing music, and you never know where that’s going to take you.”

By Dave’s side the entire time was his mother, whom he honoured in the Foo Fighters song Arlandria, a nod to the northern Virginia suburb where he grew up and where he returned to rake leaves and mow the lawn whenever turbulence interrupted Nirvana’s momentum.

She reveals he was first exposed to music listening to Beatles classics on AM radio on long drives. Their Fairfax home was so small that he did not own a drum set and learnt to play at a neighbour.

Through his publicist, Steve Martin, Dave Grohl, now 48, declined to discuss his mother’s book. – Washington Post