Dave Grohl Says He Never Meant For Foo Fighters "To Be a Career"

The Foo Fighters may have just released their Greatest Hits, but that doesn't mean the band is calling it quits anytime soon. "I look at it now like it's the end of chapter one, this is the first 15 years," Grohl tells Time.com in a video interview. "I think we'll be back sooner than people would imagine." Grohl, though, admits that he never expected the Foo Fighters to last this long. "The first album was a fluke — it wasn't meant to be a career," the Them Crooked Vultures drummer says.

Grohl, who was answering Time readers' questions, says that his favorite Foo Fighters song is "Aurora" from their 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose. "I love that song because of what it represents to me. It was the first time Taylor [Hawkins] and Nate [Mendel] and I really connected in the songwriting process," he says. "Whenever we play that song live — it doesn't matter if we're playing a club to 500 people or a stadium with 90 000 people — when I begin the intro, people go ape shit."

A couple of the readers' questions focused on Grohl's family and how having two daughters has changed his career. "The band is not the most important thing in my life," he says. "My kids are." On the same token, he says parenthood is terrifying. "I've got two daughters that are gonna grow up with a rock musician as a father, here in Los Angeles," he says. "Two beautiful girls in the Valley. I'm fucked, man. I'm shit out of luck. I don't know what to do. I gotta move."

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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