Dave Grohl on How Writing a Book is Similar to Making An Album

Dave Grohl explained in a new interview how writing his memoir, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, was similar to making an album.

Speaking to The New York Times, Grohl said, "When you make a record, you have a collection of songs. You start recording. You start to hear the tone of the album, and then it’s a matter of finding the perfect sequence from beginning to end. That’s what happened as I was writing these stories: I started to realize what was the first song, what was the last song, what was Side A, what was Side B, what I needed, what I didn’t have, what I had too much of."

Grohl had a lot of stories/songs for The Storyteller, and it sounds like he had to make a number of cuts in order to keep the book at a respectable length.

He said, "I got 350 pages in and I hadn’t even mentioned the Foo Fighters yet, a band I’ve been in for 26 years. When you’re making a huge pot of chili, you could sit there pouring spices into it all day long. But at some point, you just have to stop and let it stew."

So, writing a book is like making an album and a pot of chili. From the sound of it, Grohl could potentially feed his fans more chili...I mean...another book in the future.

As previously reported, The Storyteller topped The New York Times best sellers lists for hardcover nonfiction and combined print & e-book nonfiction. Grohl managed to beat out stiff competition from Stanley Tucci with his memoir Taste: My Life Through Food and former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's book I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw At The Trump White House.