wholesome-is the precise yet unacknowledged tension of Grohl’s The Storyteller.

The tension between his two groups-ironic vs. The second, Foo Fighters, formed and led by Grohl after the shock of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, is revered for the exact opposite reason: Grohl quickly became the standard-bearer for keeping rock ‘n’ roll alive, and he was anointed America’s Cool Dad. The first, Nirvana, became famous for knocking the establishment, young punks breaking alternative into the mainstream. Grohl was a member of what might be the two most important American rock bands of the past 30 years. None of those dreams, of course, even count the realized dreams we already knew about. Bush? President Barack Obama? Performing on Saturday Night Live (his favorite show!), at Wembley Stadium, at the White House, for the Academy Awards, and even onstage with his own daughter, Violet? Check, check, and more checks. Jamming with Tom Petty? With Paul McCartney? Meeting President George W.

Young Dave is asked, “Wanna play drums with Iggy Pop?” He does! Well, at least he got to watch “Iggy walk the short distance from his car into the same dark door I had exited. When touring with his first major band, Scream, already a dream come true, Grohl discovered that Iggy Pop was holding a record release party in the very club they were playing, but he wasn’t allowed to attend. I had let go of any resentment toward him long ago and forgiven him his shortcomings as a parent, ultimately lightening the burden of our relationship, leaving us to become good friends.” Not to mention that his success has, certainly, lasted. His father’s prediction that “this will never last” and disowning him after Grohl dropped out of high school to pursue music? By the end, “We had struggled our entire lives to connect, but even in his absence I was shaped by his presence, for better or worse. I stopped and realized that I had vividly imagined this exact moment thirty years before as a 13-year-old boy, like a premonition, and now I was actually fucking living it! Crazy as it may seem, my teenage rock and roll dream had come true.”

And in 2011, she did! “I looked down and saw Sandi standing there … in the exact same spot where she had been standing in the dream I had the night she broke my heart. Sandi, the woman whom he loved yet broke up with him in 1982? He dreamed that one day she would see him on stage in front of “thousands of screaming fans”. Dave Grohl wants you to know that all of his dreams have come true.

The storyteller grohl