Dave Grohl is one of the most respected figures in modern rock, and his admiration for The Beatles is well-established. Grohl is an open student of pop music, even though he gained notoriety in the 1990s as a member of one of the most innovative guitar bands. Kurt Cobain’s admiration for the pop craft of the Fab Four was, in fact, the driving force behind the underground no-wave band’s incredible success. Grohl talks about the John Lennon song he wishes he had written in this passage.
Grohl has expressed his love for The Beatles’ 1970 album Abbey Road on numerous occasions. In a 2019 interview with BBC Radio 2, they asked the frontman of Foo Fighters to select his album’s standout song. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is the song from that record that most strikes me and has always been my favourite,” he remarked. “Though I adore Black Sabbath, Motörhead, and heavy music in general, I believe that this song’s riff is the most profound, melodically dark, and heavy of all.”
And it doesn’t end there. When given the chance, Grohl is popular to talk openly about his admiration for the Fab Four. Nirvana’s former drummer shared a number of his favourite songs from the group in the same interview from 2019. These included “Hey Bulldog,” “Something,” “Taxman,” “Because,” and many more.
In addition, Grohl disclosed that he has a particular place in his heart for the 1965 song “In My Life.” They performed this song at the wake of his friend and former bandmate Kurt Cobain. “It holds great significance for me, as it was the song performed at Kurt Cobain’s memorial,” Grohl told Radio 2. “On that particular day, following everyone’s speech, the following song was played over the speakers. This allowed everyone to commemorate Kurt’s love for The Beatles for a final time as a group.”
But in terms of songwriting, Grohl is more drawn to John Lennon’s solo compositions. Kurt Cobain, Dave’s bandmate in Nirvana, had the same obsession with Lennon. In a 1993 Rolling Stone interview, Cobain declared, “John Lennon was unquestionably my favourite Beatle, hands down. I have no idea who wrote what portions of which Beatles songs, but McCartney makes me feel uncomfortable. It was clear that Lennon became disturbed [laughs]. Thus, I could identify with that.
Lennon’s conflicted feelings about his notoriety understandably captivated Cobain. Naturally, the former Beatle’s fame gave him access to a significant platform that he utilised to spread a message of peace. The song “Imagine” from the album of the same name, released in 1971, is among the best examples of John’s attempts to use music as a tool for social change.
In an interview with the Red Bulletin, Grohl stated, “I really wish that I had written ‘Imagine’. It’s such a beautiful song with a really timeless quality—the song just never sounds old.” I used to spend my entire childhood strumming along to [John Lennon’s] records when I was younger. Probably when I was ten or eleven years old. John was my teacher when I learned how to play the guitar in this manner.
“Imagine” tends to polarise Beatles fans, drawing inspiration from Yoko Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit. This served as a sort of precursor to Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies for artists. And with good cause. It is difficult to take John Lennon’s advice for common people to “imagine no possessions” seriously given that he wrote the song from the comfort of his opulent mansion on the Tittenhurst Park estate.
However, Dave Grohl doesn’t appear to mind. Like a great deal of other listeners, he discovered that the humility at the heart of the track. Grohl recognised the kernel of heartening empathy at the core of the track’s creation, even though Lennon and many of his fans would later scorn the song as nothing more than pop poetry—and saccharine verse at that.
