Virginia Grohl Talks With His Son Dave Grohl About Her New Book And It’s Hilarious

Virginia and David as she calls him, have done a series of interviews to promote it. Appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “CBS This Morning”. Where they show their very close bond and talk what’s to be a rock mom.  Is it all about pride and live out to the success? Or is the anxiety of the sex, drugs and Rock & Roll lifestyle on the road situation? Being that the reason behind Virginia meeting with other mothers of musicians. But also emphasizing on the moment where the music took control of Dave’s life and change everything forever.

“From Cradle to Stage” recalls, on the words of Dave, the magical moment when he discovered music. It was back of his mother’s Ford Maverick, on a hot summer day in 1975. Dave and his mom always used to sing in the car, when Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” was on the radio. Then “as Mick Jagger’s unmistakable voice joined the chorus, our voices split into harmony for the first time. My mother started singing Mick’s lower line as I sang Carly’s high lead vocal.” “Without realizing it … I was harmonizing! My heart lit up … Hell, this was the chicken AND the egg!”. But she wasn’t an ordinary mom.

But she wasn’t an ordinary mom. Since she always incentive Dave’s love for music and his bands. As she used to take him to jazz clubs. “I could have said, ‘Just go to school, get your education, have something to fall back on. Not many people make it in the music business.’ But I didn’t”. Then as Virginia recalls it was destined to be since she always knew Dave would be an entertainer. Describing him as “so outgoing and talkative; I honestly remember [him] as a child going down an escalator and he’s talking to the people coming up … He was always really fun to be around. He did some devilish things, but I never thought of him as bad”.

The content of the book has bits of every part of the experience

The book also has a passage when she starts letting go, Dave. As he joined the punk band Scream European tour at 17. A step-up, forcing her to have “the Conversation,” the rite-of-passage when he dropped out formal education. As she didn’t know what to expect from the band “because they were just screaming their heads off (…) Mohawks! Tattoos! Shredded jeans with more holes than fabric … not exactly wholesome”. She was “pretty sure they wouldn’t replace the Beatles”. But a few years later he makes an even further step. He joined Nirvana.

What in Virginia’s words “became the biggest sensation in music in decades. They changed the course of popular music … my son had become a rock star!”. She embraced it and went to many of the band’s shows. “Nirvana was playing Saturday Night Live, and I went to New York to see them. Charles Barkley was the host, and I told my class I’d get him to sign some autographs. But if there were any [bad] reports from the substitute, then they would be null and void”. This experience and her curiosity, of why she rarely met other rock moms, were the starting point of “From Cradle to Stage”.

Virginia finally meet some other ‘Rock Moms’

Dave’s mom trusted his son. She only began to worry after Kurt’s heroin addiction was highly covered by the media and he committed suicide. A period she remembers painfully. She talks about the close relationship between the bandmates and families, and how she was a good friend of Wendy, Kurt’s mom, during the whole time before and after.

Wendy “was the first ‘rock mom’ I met,” during the hype of Nirvana, as they both enjoyed the success of their sons. Both stay in touch over the years, with long gaps in between. But they got reunited when Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. At that point, Wendy was “hopeful” and described her involvement in a new film about Kurt, “Montage of Heck,” as “therapeutic”. But, the outcome “devastated her” due to “her portrayal as an uncaring, distant mother”. What led her not to participate in the book.

Despite that she encourage Virginia to published her some of her most tender memories with Kurt. Including the moment at the Reading Festival in 1991 when he announced on stage that it was “Dave’s mom’s birthday. Let’s sing to her!”. Even though Wendy was devastated, Amy Winehouse mom’s Janis had another perspective.  As her daughter also died in tragic circumstances at the age of 27. “I felt I must have been shaking my head. Can you really be that optimistic? And yet she is. She just has this life goes on theory … She didn’t talk about blaming … they had to deal with this very unusual child. I don’t know what they could have done, but they tried a lot of things”.

Mom’s experience at the Foo Fighters show

In the book we also get Virginia enjoying the success. As the passage of the Grammy nights and the trips to the White House with her son to meet Barack Obama and Paul McCartney. “There I am, getting my photo taken with my three favorite men in the world”. But above all, she loves to go on tour with Foo Fighters, as she takes her place in a folding chair at the side of the stage. “The best seat in the house. I love to watch the audience; I don’t want them to see me, so I stay back. But I love the response”.

Her son is often called “the nicest man in rock” which makes her a very proud mom. Dave is a caring person, a steady husband, and a “super dad”. “He makes their breakfast, he packs their lunch, and then he goes to the studio, He really is as nice as everyone says”. Probably the most important of all is the message of the book. Answering what a mom has to do with adventure teen musicians? She thinks that backing them up is the right thing, instead of forcing them to get a normal job. “We’ll never know what happened to their children. But there are probably a few lawyers out there who show up at … shows and would trade their BMWs for an hour on stage with a guitar”.