Yes, Dave Grohl is a good drummer. But not much else. Not an all-time great, a genius, or any of the other consistently strange claims we keep seeing online. Trying to avoid sensationalism here, but we just don’t rate Grohl’s drumming very much.

And yes, we’re here to back that up (see our 20 best drummers ever feature) with instances of truly inspired drumming talents, versus the former Nirvana drummer’s grunge genre beats.

Just How Good a Drummer is Dave Grohl?

We’ve wanted to do this feature for years, but have hesitated. Whenever we’ve raised this online, we often get met with caustic insults from his fans. Our interest here is more exploring why this reputation for being a genius has come about, when you can compare him to peers and immediately see he has a more limited skill set.

To cover the basics, Grohl was drummer with Nirvana. When people have a band that’s a cultural phenomenon like that, they tend to deify every member and make them out as the best ever.

We have seen Grohl fans claim the drummer is “without a doubt” the best drummer ever. When he isn’t, very clearly, nor we would we put him in the top 100 drummers ever.

The Comparison Begins: Castillo, Reni, Bonham, and

A great immediate example of this is when Grohl was drumming for Queens of the Stone Age around 2001-2002 (see Grohl playing No One Knows above).

As it was a part-time deal, he shared drumming duties with the monstrous beast that is Joey Castillo. The difference here is just immediately obvious for us, Castillo is free-flowing, precise, powerful, spectacular, and much more natural in his playing style.

Now, we think Grohl is a really cool guy. We love his enthusiasm for the drums and it’s not him going around claiming he’s the best drummer ever, he’s actually more fond of self-deprecation than anything else.

And to balance our argument out, here’s someone claiming he’s a genius.

That video even frames it that he’s “underrated”, even though all I ever see is Grohl being overrated. For us, all the clips in that video supposed to highlight his “genius” show his limitations. He has one style of playing, lacks versatility, and he’s heavily straining all the time. An indication it’s not a natural talent for him.

Grohl’s influences include Led Zeppelin’s legendary genius John Bonham. He’s often cited as the greatest drummer of all time.

For the record, he could play like this (see the 1 minute 50 second mark).

We’ve asked Grohl fans about this over the years (20+ years) and some have responded by saying Grohl is a distinctive drummer. We find that response odd, as it’s fairly standard grunge drumming.

Nirvana’s famous song Smells Like Teen Spirit is a classic example of Grohl’s style. A pretty cut back, basic beat played heavily. With lots of heavy hitting. Here he is in action.

Again, Bonham is a brilliant comparison. Grunge drummers lifted the heavy Led Zeppelin style and added in punk elements, but you hear Bonham’s complexity of playing on Fool in the Rain and it’s something else. A different level.

Or there’s The Who’s Keith Moon, flying all around the kit with that one-in-a-billion natural genius of his. His fingers so dextrous, and mind so fast, he’s thinking 10 steps ahead.

Let’s cut back to Dave Grohl again and whilst researching through various recordings, all our old issues with his playing style came back.

The lack of versatility, the wooden movements, the repeated whacking of the snare, no real flourishes, but lots of heavy hitting (which is what seems to impress fans the most). This six-minute clip is just him doing exactly the same thing for every song.

You compare this to his peers, such as The Stone Roses’ genius Reni (easily the best drummer of their generation), and it’s a demonstration of a talent in a different league. Remarkable natural ability, no straining, physics-defying brilliance.

There’s 10 seconds of this 50 second clip from 1985 that nullify the entirety of Grohl’s drumming career.

We’ve not even mentioned the phenomenal talent of CAN’s Jaki Liebezeit yet, that’s because we want to flag up a few jazz greats. One example in the form of Charly Antolini, early 50s in this clip from 1993.

This was recorded at a time when Nirvana were taking off and Grohl seen as a genius talent by his fans. But watch Antolini’s drum solo from the 4 minute 30 mark onward.

The thing with grunge and metal drummers is they look sinewy, often have their hair grown long, take their tops off, and get heavily tattooed. The macho side of drumming, where they’re straining away like mad whacking as hard as they can with bad technique.

Then you get jazz greats with all the natural brilliance, flourishes, timing, and flow that makes the grunge lot look useless.

Anyway, we feel we’ve been rambling. Plenty of evidence of things above and, to be clear, we think Dave Grohl is a good drummer.

Is he a genius? No, not even close. He’s certainly very influential and that’s a great thing, as he’s inspired many others to take up the drums. However, this longstanding claims he’s one of the best ever needs revisiting. As the suggestion he’s on the level of the very best is absurd.