ROCKER Dave Grohl has performed some of the biggest hits of all time, both when he was a drummer for legendary grunge band Nirvana and later as the frontman of the iconic Foo Fighters.
However, all of this has come at a cost. Grohl recently went on The Howard Stern Show to detail the issues he has been facing while living with hearing loss brought on by his decades-long music career.
In particular, Grohl said that the pandemic brought about extra challenges for him, as someone who has to read lips.
“That’s the worst thing about this pandemic ... it’s like, people wearing masks,“ he told Stern. “I’ve been reading lips for like, 20 years, so when someone comes up to me ... I’m like, ‘I’m a rock musician. I’m deaf, I can’t hear what you’re saying’.”
Grohl explained that he hadn’t had his ears tested in “a long time,“ but was diagnosed with acute tinnitus some years ago.
Fortunately, the Grammy winner, now 53, can still hear the music.
“My ears are still tuned in to certain frequencies, and if I hear something that’s slightly out of tune, or a cymbal that’s not bright enough or something like that... in the mix, I can f***ing hear the minutiae of everything that we have done to that song, I really can,“ he explained.
“That being said, like, if you were sitting next to me right here at dinner, I wouldn’t understand a word you were saying to me, the whole time,“ Grohl said. “There’s no way. In a crowded restaurant, that’s worse.”
He said in-ear monitors, which many artists use to filter some sounds out and protect their ears while performing, didn’t work for him.
Still, the sound he hears onstage is “perfect,“ he said, thanks to his “monitor guy,“ Ian Beveridge, who has been with him since his days in Nirvana.
