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And Finally Artist News Live Business
Dave Grohl: “I’m a rock musician. I’m fucking deaf”
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 22 February 2022
Dave Grohl has said that years of performing live without hearing protection have left him with tinnitus and hearing loss. But if you think he’s going to change anything, you’ve got another thing coming. “I’ve been reading lips for 20 years”, he told Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show, but when it comes to recording music, he insists, “I can hear the minutiae of everything we have done”.
Asked why he doesn’t use in-ear monitors, to reduce the level of noise hitting his ear drums, Grohl says: “I tried the in-ear monitor thing before, a long time ago, and the problem I have with it is it removes from the natural atmosphere sound. I wanna hear the audience in front of me … It messes with your spatial understanding of where you are on stage”.
He adds that there is some mitigation to his on stage sound, saying: “Even though I’m not using ear monitors, the sound on stage for me is fucking perfect, cos it’s been [set up by] the same [monitor sound engineer], Ian Beveridge, for 31 years – since Nirvana. So I’m not up there just getting my ass kicked by some loud stuff. It sounds great”.
“We’ve been playing shows like this for so long, there’s not much I want to change”, he adds. And “when we go in and we’re making a record, and we’re mixing an album, I can hear the slightest little things. My ears are still tuned in to certain frequencies, and if I hear something out of tune or a cymbal that’s not bright enough or something like that … in the mix, I can fucking hear the minutiae of everything we had done to that song, I really can”.
“That being said”, he continues, “if you were sitting next to me at dinner, I wouldn’t understand a fucking word you were saying to me the whole fucking time. There’s no way. In a crowded restaurant – that’s the worst”.
“The worst thing about this pandemic shit is people wearing masks”, he goes on. “I’ve been reading lips for, like, 20 years. So when someone comes up to me [speaking with their face covered] I say, ‘I’m a rock musician. I’m fucking deaf. I can’t hear what you’re saying’”.
Anyway, ignore him, protect your ears. None of what he just said is a good thing. What possibly is a good thing is the release of Foo Fighter’s horror movie ‘Studio 666’ this Friday. If only because it should drown out my own tinnitus for a little while.
