It feels a little weird to be in a cultural moment where we have musicians referring to punk rock in “back in my day…” types of statements. Yet, here we are. The newest iteration of those statements comes courtesy of Dave Grohl, who responded to Digital Spy’s questions about his stance on The Great Taylor Swift Spotify Debate by quite literally saying, “I don’t fucking care.”
“I want people to hear our music, I don’t care if you pay $1 or fucking $20 for it, just listen to the fucking song,” he added. “But I can understand how other people would object to that.”
Grohl went on to explain that his dismissive attitude comes not from being a salty old punk rocker who’s been slamming in the pit since before any of you twerps were born, but from his reliance on live music for his income stream. Using the record mainly as a promotional item and making most of their money from touring is a tactic that bands have been relying on since the days when it was record labels ripping them off, not Swedish streaming services. “You want people to fucking listen to your music? Give them your music. And then go play a show,” Grohl said. “They like hearing your music? They’ll go see a show. To me it’s that simple, and I think it used to work that way.”
That’s a solid point, but then things started teetering dangerously into Old Rocker Guy territory, with Grohl one step away from getting all misty-eyed about selling cassette tapes out of the back of his van when he said, “When we were young and in really noisy, crappy punk rock bands there was no career opportunity and we loved doing it and people loved fucking watching it and the delivery was completely face to face personal..Nowadays there’s so much focus on technology that it doesn’t really matter.”