The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music is a memoir written by Dave Grohl that was first published in 2021. The memoir is a collection of stories from Grohl’s childhood, youth, young adulthood, and current life as an established and well-known musician. Grohl started out working as a drummer with a punk group called Scream in the late 1980s before becoming world famous as the drummer for Nirvana. After Kurt Cobain’s death and the dissolution of Nirvana in 1994, he created his own band, the Foo Fighters. Grohl has worked on countless other music and film projects and has won 18 Grammys for his music to date. The Storyteller is his first book.

This study guide uses the 2021 Dey Street first edition of the book.

Plot Summary

Grohl’s memoir follows a loose, chronological timeline, maintaining a thread from his youth to the present while drawing parallels between memories and experiences of the distant past with those that have occurred recently. His memoir begins with an anecdote about his daughter, Harper, who desperately wants to learn to play drums. Grohl sees himself in his daughter’s passion and also remembers the way his mother helped him first discover music; Grohl emphasizes the circular nature of life and how traits like a passion for music seem to be passed on from generation to generation. He recalls how his mother took him to a local jazz club, and it was there that he first became inspired to play music himself. As an adolescent, he was introduced to punk music through his cousin and a Naked Raygun concert, and immediately developed an interest in the musical genre. Next, Grohl recounts a memory of Sandi, the first girl he fell in love with and who broke his heart. After the breakup, Grohl realized that his true love in life is music and that he did not need Sandi or anyone else as long as he had his guitar.

Grohl’s childhood was a typical 1970s, American-suburban childhood in Virginia, complete with BB guns, fishing trips, and plenty of injuries. Grohl draws a connection between his tendency toward physical strain and an incident where he ended up playing a Foo Fighters concert in a cast after breaking his foot on stage. Here, Grohl relays the importance of perseverance and courage in the music industry, and how much sacrifice and pain are required to be the musician he wants to be. As a teenager, Grohl set up a shrine dedicated to John Bonham, the drummer for Led Zeppelin, and prayed that he would one day become a successful musician. Although he is still not sure if the exercise worked or not, he asserts that some things in life require unwavering faith and that music is one of those things.

At age 17, Grohl dropped out of school to join Scream, a punk rock group for which he auditioned. His mother permitted him, warning that better become good at it, and Grohl dove headfirst into music. He toured the world with Scream as their drummer, developing close bonds and staying with various punk rockers along the way. He worked odd jobs to get by, often living in a van and eating little to nothing. Today, Grohl knows it is all worth it and looks back on these times fondly.

One fateful night, Grohl and Scream happened to be at the same club where Iggy Pop was performing. Grohl and the bassist were asked to perform with Iggy, and it was a life-changing moment for Grohl. He realized for the first time that his heroes—the musicians he admired his whole life—were real people, and even more, they were approachable and honest. Grohl felt as if he had finally made it. He continued touring with Scream, but the band began to fracture and Grohl took a chance on auditioning for Nirvana instead.

Grohl was accepted into Nirvana in 1990 and made the difficult decision to leave his punk family and friends behind to pursue true success with Nirvana. He moved to Seattle and into a squalid apartment with singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain/ Nirvana rose to fame with extreme speed, and everyone in the group found it overwhelming and even traumatic. Kurt reacted especially poorly to the devotion of fans and growing attention in his everyday life. The band released their now legendary album, Nevermind, and after the tour, went off to live in separate corners of the United States. Grohl headed off on an adventure to the Manson home with his friend, and soon after, found out that Kurt was in rehab for heroin addiction. A few months later, Kurt was found dead, and Grohl’s world was forever changed. Grohl’s grieving process was complicated and difficult, and it took him years to be able to look back and smile rather than cry. For a year, Grohl recorded his own music but otherwise played very little, until he was invited to perform on Saturday Night Live. This show brought back his spirits, and he headed back home to Virginia to dive back into his music career. He began selling cassettes of music from his new, at this point solo group: the Foo Fighters.

Grohl jumps forward in time to discuss his memories of his first, second, and third daughters being born, and how each one changed his life. He recalls feeling a new type of responsibility to be a dependable person, and to this day attempts to be that father as much as he can. His children were born between 2006 and 2014, a time when Grohl’s musical career was taking off again, and he had to learn to juggle his family and his music. This took practice, but he has mastered this art over time. Grohl was soon being invited to pivotal ceremonies like the Kennedy Center Honors. Grohl also visited a psychic during this time, who told him he has a great deal of his own psychic energy. He recounts his experiences feeling the presence of ghosts in a house he lived in, as well as the dreams of UFOs he had as a child.

As Grohl’s life became more and more busy and complex, he found himself developing chest pains. A doctor warned him to cut down on the large amount of coffee he consumed and to slow down a little with his life; he regularly flew around the world, making stops at home to visit his family along the way, and often got less than three hours of sleep. Grohl also started a side project with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and Josh Homme of the Queens of the Stone Age—a group they named Them Crooked Vultures. As Grohl’s fame rose, so too did his acceptance into the social circles of great musicians. He hosted a party for Paul McCartney, AC/DC, and their families, inviting the New Orleans Preservation Hall Jazz Band to perform for them all. When thinking about this party, Grohl considers it a small gift to pay back the endless gifts these musicians gave him throughout his life.

In the present, Grohl recounts stories of inviting Joan Jett to his house and having her read his daughter bedtime stories, acknowledging the importance of Joan Jett as a woman in music and her power to inspire his daughters to follow their own paths. Finally, he tells the story of attending the daddy-daughter dance for his daughters, Violet and Harper, which required flying from Australia to the US for the day and then immediately back again; Grohl believes in doing everything he can to be a dependable father. He ends his memoir with his 2016 performance of “Blackbird” at the Academy Awards, connecting his performance with his own daughter’s courage when she sang the song for her school the year before. With this, he notes that his life continues to come full circle.