Last week, Dave Grohl opened up about his hearing loss, revealing that he has been reading lips for 20 years.
During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show last week, the 53-year-old musician called himself “f***ing deaf,” explaining that he has relied on reading lips for the last two decades.
The frontman and guitarist of Foo Fighters said of getting his ears checked with the doctor, “I haven’t had them tested in a long time — I mean, I know what they’re gonna say. “‘You have hearing damage tinnitus in your left ear, morseo than your right ear.’”
Grohl also revealed that he finds it extremely difficult to hear other people in public places. He also struggled to do so during the pandemic because people have been wearing masks, covering their mouths.
He told Stern, “If you were sitting next to me right here at dinner, I wouldn’t understand a f***ing word you were saying to me, the whole f***ing time. There’s no way. In a crowded restaurant, that’s worse. That’s the worst thing about this pandemic s***, it’s like, people wearing masks.”
“I’ve been reading lips for like, 20 years, so when someone comes up to me and they’re like [garbled noise], I’m like, ‘I’m a rock musician,” he added. “I’m f***ing deaf, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
However, Grohl said despite his struggles, he is still able to hear “the slightest little things” when recording in the studio and mixing albums.
The drummer of the Seattle grunge band Nirvana said, “My ears are still tuned in to certain frequencies, and if I hear something that’s slightly out of tune, or a cymbal that’s not bright enough or something like that, in the mix, I can f***ing hear the minutiae of everything that we have done to that song, I really can.”
He went on to explain, “I wanna hear the audience like, in front of me and I want to turn around be able to hear Taylor [Hawkins] right there and go over here and hear Pat [Smear], and go over here and hear Chris [Shiflett] and stuff like that. It just messes with your spatial understanding of where you are on stage.”
Grohl told Stern that he has relied on the same person to mix his monitors for more than 30 years. He said the person ensures that “the sound on stage for me is f***ing perfect.”
