Rise to Fame
Dropping out of high school to join a punk band at 17 is one thing. Becoming the drummer for Nirvana four years later is another. He lied about his age to join Scream, then got the Nirvana call in 1990 and described the first rehearsal as sounding like the band within 45 seconds. He played on Nevermind, which sold over 30 million copies, but spent the whole time quietly writing his own songs because he was too intimidated to show them to Cobain. When Cobain died in 1994, he went into a studio, recorded 15 songs alone in six days, and deliberately called the project 'Foo Fighters' so nobody would think it was a vanity act. That calculation worked.
In the Spotlight
His reputation as rock's most dependable nice guy took a hit in September 2024, when he posted on Instagram that he'd fathered a child outside his marriage of 21 years. What followed was stranger than the confession: six days a week of therapy for 70 weeks, a cancelled tour, and the band losing a second drummer in three years after Josh Freese got fired without explanation. Foo Fighters have a new album, Your Favorite Toy, coming April 2026, but the dominant question right now isn't the music. It's whether the persona can survive the biography.
Side Notes
As a kid, he called every Jim Craig listed in Worcester, Massachusetts to find the right one to congratulate after the U.S. hockey team's 1980 Miracle on Ice. In 2015, he broke his leg onstage in Sweden and finished the show from a custom throne. His 2021 memoir The Storyteller hit number one on the New York Times Bestseller List. He's been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, with Nirvana and with Foo Fighters, and he still can't read sheet music.