Dave Grohl says Kiss ‘inspired me to become a rock’n’roll musician’

The Foo Fighters man presented Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley with a ASCAP Founders Award this week

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl presented Kiss with an award at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards in Los Angeles on Wednesday (April 29), revealing how the band had inspired him to be a rock star.

The band were honoured with the ASCAP Founders Award at the ceremony, with Grohl telling the audience how KISS influenced him in his youth and “ultimately inspired me to follow this unreasonable dream of becoming a professional rock ‘n’ roll musician”.

Grohl added, “Forty years later, my love of KISS is still strong.”

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Accepting the award, KISS’ Gene Simmons said, “Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters are carrying the flag that we hope will inspire the next generation of young kids.”

Read Grohl’s full speech below, via Billboard.

Picture this: Springfield, Virginia, 1976. A skinny young boy with shaggy brown hair on a yellow yard sale bicycle brings home a copy of the album Destroyer, his first KISS record. Everybody remembers their first KISS record, and this is how I remember mine.

Up until that point, it had been mainly Beatles and Carly Simon, maybe a little Phoebe Snow, fuckin’ 10cc. But the album cover alone was enough to make me break my old piggy bank into a thousand pieces and scrape up enough lawn-mowing money to give it straight to Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

With nuclear anticipation, I let the needle drop on that legendary intro to “Detroit Rock City,” perhaps the greatest introduction to any rock ‘n’ roll album ever recorded. It filled my speakers and my imagination. Thirty-four minutes later and 27 seconds later, KISS had filled my soul. I was now a member of the infamous KISS army.

Before long, my room had become a fucking shrine. Posters of these four musical monsters lined my walls action figures filled my shelves and KISS albums overtook my once A.M,-friendly record collection. I was converted…

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Every morning, I would wake up in my tiny bedroom and take a good look at my superheroes before walking to school. They got me through those years and ultimately inspired me to follow this unreasonable dream of becoming a professional rock ‘n’ roll musician.

One hundred million albums. One hundred million fucking albums. Countless hit singles, record-breaking concert attendance. They even made fuckin’ disco look cool with “I Was Made For Lovin You.” Raise your hand if you can say the same thing.

I remember the KISS radio, which they just showed on screen — I’m so happy that they actually have remnants of this f—ing masterpiece of technology. I remember the KISS radios advertised on TV — “Hear all of your favorite KISS songs on your official KISS radio!” I imagined it was futuristic piece of technology and my direct link to my musical gods, so I ordered one… C.O.D., without even asking for permission from my struggling schoolteacher mother.

I’ll never forget the day it arrived. The mailman knocked on the door, my mother took one look at this thing and said, I didn’t fucking order that. Then she sent it away.

Forty years later, my love of KISS is still strong. And these days I still spend every morning before school with Paul Stanley… in the parking lot of our kids’ fuckin’ elementary school, chatting about Zeppelin and Electric Lady and touring and school fundraisers. So I’d say that my unreasonable dream definitely came true. And I finally got my KISS radio — it’s the cheapest fucking A.M. radio I have eve seen in my life! With the KISS logo on it. Nice one, Gene.

So without further adieu, it is my great honor to say: you wanted the best, and you got the best. The hottest band in the world — KISS!

Dave Grohl recently suggested that there may be a second series of Sonic Highways based in the UK. Named after the group’s recent album of the same title, the series originally premiered on HBO (and later BBC Four in the UK) in October 2014. It followed Dave Grohl and the band as they recorded their eighth LP in eight different cities around America.

Speaking recently, Grohl said: “There might be a season two. There are a lot of studios.” As for the location of these studios, Grohl seemed to suggest that getting out of America is where the future of the show lies. “If we went to somewhere like Abbey Road it’d be fun to interview someone like Paul McCartney or George Martin, that’d be kind of cool,” he said. “Or go to say, Berlin, and interview someone like David Bowie or Iggy [Pop]. You could go to Manchester and interview the Happy Mondays, guys.”

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