Culture
Dave Grohl Has a Pro-Rock Urban Policy Agenda
At CityLab DC, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl described how playing in bands changed his life—and what cities can do to cultivate their scenes.
Long before the city became known as an Amazon boomtown, Dave Grohl remembers the 1990 Seattle as a place that existed in a “little cultural biodome” of its own. “What did we have? Like, fish and Bill Gates and whatever.”
The Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer headlined CityLab DC on Tuesday, talking with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg about how music scenes like the one that emerged in the grunge-era Pacific Northwest can become city-shaping forces. “Those kids were connecting to what was going on in a way that doesn’t happen often,” he said. “It happens just before a musical revolution.”