Review: Dave Grohl's SXSW Keynote Address

On March 14, 2013, the illustrious Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame, gave the Keynote Address at the South By Southwest music and culture festival in Austin, Texas. Though the bespectacled (“Got these at a drugstore 'cause I'm going blind. Hope I still look like a rock star.”) Grohl's speech hit on both the high and low points on his path to rock superstardom, his career anecdotes were simply the backdrop for Grohl's thesis, which he aimed directly at musicians everywhere: “Find your own voice.”

South by Southwest

It was an inspirational sentiment, especially coming from someone many consider to be a father of modern-day rock n' roll, the founder of grunge, and a perennial figure in current music culture. “Now, more than ever, independence as a musician has been blessed by the advance of technology,” Grohl said, repeatedly tucking stray locks of dark hair behind his ear. “Any inspired young musician [can] start their own band, write their own song, record their own record, book their own shows, write and publish their own fanzine. You can do this, it can be all yours.”

Grohl even entertained the audience, picking up an acoustic guitar and demonstrating how, as a 12 year-old kid teaching himself to play on an old Sears Silvertone, he had figured out how to multitrack by bouncing cassette tapes between two recorders, laying down a guitar track first and then beating out a simple rhythm with his hands to accompany the three chord progression. The Austin crowd loved this, cheering and laughing at what must have seemed like a mind-numbingly elementary exercise for the 12-time Grammy winning artist. However, as comical as it may have been, Grohl was using the small performance to make a point about the importance of independence in music.

“I had finally found my voice. And that was all I needed to survive from now on. The reward of playing a song from beginning to end without making a mistake...well, that could feed me for weeks. I liked my new voice. Because, no matter how bad it sounded...it was mine. There was nobody there to tell me what was right or what was wrong, so...there was no right or wrong.”

This theme of a musician's independence pervaded Grohl's address, as he continued with stories about growing up in the D.C. punk scene and witnessing the “the blissful removal of these bands from any source of conventional, popular corporate structure, and the underground network that supported the music's independence that was totally inspiring to me,” and of playing with Nirvana, of practicing for hours on end in a barn in Seattle, and of their subsequent rise to international success. “Up until that point no one had ever told me how to play or what to play,” Grohl said, smiling as he leaned in close to the podium's microphone. “And now, no one ever would.”

And though Grohl's success, he admits, has afforded him the luxury to be uncompromising, his speech at South By Southwest was less a rebellion against corporate censorship (jabs against Christina Aguilera, The Voice, and Pitchfork aside) and more a call for musicians to realize the power of their own creativity and to remember why they fell in love with music in the first place. “There was no career opportunity. There was no hall of fame,” he said, recalling when he first began playing in bands as a teenager. “There were no trophies. There was no A&R credit card buying Benihana dinners. Our reward was knowing that we had done all of this all on our own, and that it was real.”

By the end of the speech, Grohl's sincerity and candor had removed the glow and awe that surrounds every rockstar; he was simply a man who loved music and had discovered that, for the true musician, one's voice can be heard in every chord and every beat and every lyric, through the shine of million-dollar recording studios or on Radio Shack tape recorders.

“There is no right or wrong. There is only your voice. Your voice screaming through an old Neve 8028 recording console, your voice singing from a laptop, your voice echoing from a street corner, a cello, a turntable, a guitar, serrato, a studer, It doesn't matter. What matters most is that it's your voice. Cherish it. Respect it. Nurture it. Challenge it. Stretch it and scream until it's fucking gone. Because every human being is blessed with at least that, and who knows how long it will last...”