Dave Grohl, SXSW 2013 Speech: 'The Musician Comes First' Says Foo Fighters Leader

Foo Fighters/Sound City/Nirvana/Probot/Queens of the Stone Age/etc musical traveler Dave Grohl has one main rule:

"The musician comes first."

That was the recurring theme of Grohl's impassioned 55-minute keynote address, which drew a standing ovation from hundreds of South by Southwest Music Conference delegates before and after, at the Austin Convention Center on Thursday morning.

Grohl is also in Austin for screenings of the new "Sound City" documentary he directed about the legendary Los Angeles recording studio that bears the same name and a concert tonight at Stubb's featuring many of the people interviewed for the movie -- including John Fogerty, Stevie Nicks, Rick Springfield, Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, Fear's Lee Ving, Rage Against the Machine's Brad Wilk, Nirvana's Krist Novoselic and Grohl's Foo Fighters bandmates.

Grohl first thanked Edgar Winter, whose 1973 instrumental hit "Frankenstein" was included on the K-tel Block Buster compilation he got as a child and which he says made him realize he was destined to be a musician. He got his first guitar and a Beatles songbook not long after, and though he didn't take lessons he devoted his life to practicing his new religion.

"The reward of playing a song from beginning to end without making a mistake was enough to feed me for weeks," he said of his early "one-man band" years, which included making primitive multi-track recordings in his bedroom.

Grohl's next epiphany was visiting his cousin Tracy in Chicago when he was 13. She was a punk rocker who shared her collection of records by artists he'd never heard of before, and the now 44-year-old musician stated, "This was the first day of the rest of my life."

Grohl attended a Naked Raygun show at a dingy Chicago club during that trip and then immersed himself in the Washington, D.C. punk scene when he returned home to nearby Springfield, Va. He attended the "Rock Against Reagan" concert in Washington on July 4, 1983, which he called his "Woodstock and Altamont" after hearing Dirty Rotten Imbeciles perform "I Don't Need Society" and learning music had the power to start a riot.

Grohl dropped out of high school and became the drummer for Washington, D.C. band Scream. Life wasn't easy, but he loved it because he was free and was finding his voice. He was broke and couch-surfing in Los Angeles when he heard the five words that once again changed his life: "Have you heard of Nirvana?"

Grohl moved to Seattle and became Nirvana's drummer. The group's Bleach debut album on Sub Pop Records caused a stir, and it wasn't long before the trio became the subject of a major bidding war by the largest record companies around. Nirvana chose DGC and went to Sound City to record 13 songs in 13 days without any label interference. Those tracks became 1991's landmark Nevermind. The initial pressing was 35,000 units, but momentum kept building to the point where, at its peak, Nevermind was selling more than 300,000 copies a week.

"Now it was us who had the power" to be left alone, Grohl said of recording 12 songs virtually live with producer Steve Albini over a few days for Nevermind's follow-up album. Those songs formed In Utero, Nirvana's final studio album before lead singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain committed suicide on April 8, 1994 and left Grohl gutted.

"The music that I had devoted my life to had now betrayed me," he said. "I had no voice. I turned off the radio and put away my drums."

But the inspiration he felt a decade earlier at "Rock Against Reagan" eventually returned and he booked a studio for six days to play, record and mix 14 songs by himself. He considered it a "therapeutic demo" when he handed tapes of the songs to a few people, but soon word of it spread further afield and in 1995 it became Foo Fighters' self-titled debut album on Grohl's Roswell Records imprint.

"There was no right or wrong because it was all mine," Grohl explained of licensing the Foos' material to record companies for periods, but retaining full ownership of it. "You have to give it back because it's mine. And I'm the musician and I come first."

What Grohl learned from the punk movement and Nirvana and his own efforts was that a musician can -- and needs to - control their own destiny. Technological advances have made it easier than ever for musicians to do everything themselves without the involvement of a music industry team behind it. This is something that real musicians should treat as a valuable gift.

"Left to your own devices, you can find your voice," Grohl offered. "Cherish it, respect it, nurture it."

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Watch the trailer for "Sound City"

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