AOW #13: "The Gospel of Grohl" - The Red Bulletin, December 2011 issue

This piece was an interview with the lead singer of the Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl. The interview was taken right before one of the last shows on the Foos European tour. The interviewer asked questions not only about the tour, but also about Dave’s early music “career” and how much of a career it wasn’t.

The author of this article was Andreas Rottenschlager and he writes for The Red Bulletin magazine. I did a background check on Rottenschlager but couldn’t find much plausible information on him. However, if they allowed him back stage and if he writes for a well-renouned magazine, we can guess that he is a trustworthy reporter. Also, he didn’t add any of his own insight into the article; he just allowed Grohl to answer for himself with unaltered results.

The context of this piece would be spacial, not only for the reader but for Grohl as well. It would be spacial because these posed questions required Grohl to search back into his repertoire and formulate an answer based off his past experiences. Although it could be seen as casual – because of the ongoing tour – I believe that since the entire interview wasn’t super focused on the tour and more on his earlier years, then it would be seen as spacial for both the audience and the speaker.

The purpose for this piece was to, more or less, “piece” Dave’s past together for the audience as well as for Dave so we can see the progression to where he is today (at the time, ending the Euro tour and leading up to the North American tour).  

The more obvious audience for this piece would be readers of The Red Bulletin. More specifically, it could be for avid Foo Fighters fans (going by the cover of just Dave’s face) who randomly found this article.

Some rhetorical elements used (more on Grohl’s part) would be pathos (satire). As for the interviewer: communal memory and dialogue. For Grohl, while answering the questions, he made sure to add a light, satirical sense to his responses – as he always does. You can not only sense this through his retorts (for example when he said “Ask the president of our record company…OK I am the president of our record company” – which was an intentional joke) as well as the little add-ins (such as the “[laughs]” to symbolize when Grohl was laughing, for clarification). As for the interviewer, he made sure to ask questions (the more palpable element) that would trigger communal understanding for both Grohl and the reader, which made the article easier to follow.  For example, questions like “Does it…mean anything…that 2011 is the 20^th anniversary of Nirvana’s album, ‘Nevermind,’” generates mutual understanding of the foregrounds that this interview is based upon, which allows the readers to connect to the article with ease.

Yes, the author accomplished their purpose, because even though I have a lot of background on Grohl, the Foos, and his past bands, this article opened up my eyes to who Dave really is. The personal questions and sincere replies not only enhanced my background on Grohl as a person, but they also made me love him and the Foos that much more.