In an interview with Eric Blair at this year’s “Bowl for Ronnie” event, FOO FIGHTERS frontman Dave Grohl discussed how the music of late Ronnie James Dio affected his songwriting.
“Well, Holy Diver is one of the best f*cking albums of all time… When I listen to records, I don’t just listen to the vocals, I don’t just listen to the drums, I listen to it as a whole.
“An album like that, that’s kind of the perfect record. [Drummer] Vinny Appice‘s playing on that f*cking album is insane,” he added. “As a drummer, I listen to that record and it’s, like, I don’t know if it’s composition or if that sh*t was just coming off the top of his head.
“But as a drummer, that album is incredibly inspiring and influential. The simplicity of something like that – that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Dio‘s music: it’s not overly complicated or orchestrated, it’s a sum of a few very simple parts. And it’s powerful, and I f*cking grew up with that sh*t.
“I remember being 13 or 14 years old and seeing ‘Stand Up and Shout’ live on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert on Friday night. It makes you want to become a musician; you see something like that and it’s so moving and inspiring that you’re, like, ‘Oh my god, That’s what I wanna do for the rest of my life!’ It did that to me.”
