Dave Grohl (hiss!), Oasis (yay!): Why we’re entering a new era of Good Guy Rock

A young woman clutches a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Dave Grohl and throws it off her balcony. In slow motion, she then uses it as a punching bag before stomping it into her concrete driveway. As Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” rages in the background she tears pages out of Grohl’s 2021 memoir and burns them in a fire pit.
The video, which has amassed more than 5 million views on TikTok, was posted by @littlephatlamb on Sept. 11, the day after Grohl publicly admitted to fathering a daughter outside his 21-year marriage.
“I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her,” the musician said in a statement. “I love my wife and my children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness.”
Foo Fighters subsequently cancelled their appearance at last weekend’s Soundside Music Festival in Bridgeport, Conn. The band gave no explanation.
On one end of the response spectrum was confusion: Why was Grohl airing such a personal transgression the way a crisis PR firm would issue an apology?
On the other end was betrayal: How could he?
Historically, if you were seeking the music industry’s pillars of fidelity and decency, you wouldn’t knock on rock ’n’ roll’s door. The genre has long been a vehicle for rebellion and hellraising, carving generation-defining moments into the cultural canon with a rusty switchblade: Bob Dylan goes electric, Jimi Hendrix lights his guitar on fire, Keith Richards is Keith Richards.
Some antics had turbulent personal consequences. But Mick Jagger wasn’t expected to issue an apology after his biographer estimated the front man slept with 4,000 women. Neither was Eric Clapton, for writing “Layla” about George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, who later left the Beatle to be with him. (Clapton and Harrison were best friends at the time.) Nor was Fleetwood Mac, after broadcasting one of rock’s messiest love triangles.
These behaviours shouldn’t be celebrated or glamourized. They’re actions, like Grohl’s, that could tear families and lives apart. But for some fans, the chaos was part of the draw. If we had to follow social mores, we could find some escapist pleasure in observing a group of misfits who refused to do the same.
Admittedly, the music industry’s #MeToo reckoning has been slow compared to the movie and TV worlds. Sean “Diddy” Combs and R. Kelly are among the few artists being taken to task for their offences, but rock’s front men have been left surprisingly unscathed. When you think of the countless stories we’ve heard by now, one wonders if we aren’t simply waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But our tolerance has been dialed down to a hum, and the thicker a man can draw the line between himself and those guys, the better. This is precisely why Dave Grohl’s Mr. Nice Guy persona served him so well. Through TikToks with his daughter and press tours with his mom, the Foo Fighter deepened the gulf between perception and reality. And it worked. There are entire subreddits dedicated to “Wholesome Dave Grohl.” In an increasingly fraught social climate, fans were eager to place him in the growing camp of “Good Guy Rock.”
The genre’s nice guys are certainly having a moment. Coldplay is currently on what Billboard has called the biggest rock tour of all time. Their frontman, Chris Martin, has long (and unfairly) been an anti-rock punchline. (You might remember Oasis’ Liam Gallagher saying, “The most rock ’n’ roll thing Chris Martin did was wear a leather jacket.”)
But the group’s Music of the Spheres World Tour has now grossed more than $1 billion. The multi-year undertaking has been largely defined by its pledge to sustainability, prioritizing commercial flights, issuing audience members reusable LED wristbands and powering its stage production with “super-low emission energy.” This eco-friendliness is a far cry from the gas-guzzling Eagles famously arriving at their shows in separate limos.
The Killers are currently on tour celebrating their classic debut, “Hot Fuss.” Since the album’s 2004 release, frontman Brandon Flowers has become more devoted to Mormonism, even incorporating his values into some of their arena anthems. The singer abstains from drugs, alcohol and sexually suggestive lyrics, and has spoken directly about how he shifted his path to embody the ethos of his own wholesome hero: Bruce Springsteen.
“You go from worshipping bands like Depeche Mode, who I still love but there was a lot of hedonism and debauchery,” he said in a 2023 interview. “But then here’s this guy singing about people like my parents, he’s been married for 35 years, and his kids are great.”
Fans used to find thrills in the contrast between rock ’n’ roll rebellion and their own realities, but now seem to seek comfort in the overlap. Jack White is proposing to, and marrying, his partner onstage, and posing for pictures in his daughter’s dorm room on her first day of college. Metallica’s James Hetfield is raving about his obsession with birdwatching.
“I know all the birds that come out there,” he said in June. “I’ve got my little app that has bird noises, and I can see which one they are, and I’ll pull it up and talk to ’em and all that stuff.”
If we previously expected rock ’n’ rollers to carry their deviant personas into their personal lives, we’re now content for them to leave the debauchery onstage. Being a good father, partner, brother or birdwatcher has become the new flex.
This not only applies to the rock’s seasoned pros, but to its younger acts. You don’t see headlines about the misdeeds of Måneskin or King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. If unruly things are going on behind the scenes, the musicians are certainly not bragging about them the way their predecessors did.
In a 2016 interview, the relentless Liam Gallagher lamented this trend.
“There is no excuse for young bands to act like grown men,” he said. “When you’re older and have kids, cool it out a bit, but I get up to more mischief in my butcher’s than (they) do on their f—king tours.”
Infighting is yet another dysfunctional rock ’n’ roll hallmark that has gone out of style. Eight years after Liam made this statement, he and his bother Noel (Oasis’ guitarist) registered themselves for the Good Guy Rock Club by burying the hatchet after 15 years of feuding and reuniting for a tour.
When Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell recently threw a punch at guitarist Dave Navarro on stage, fans lamented how heartbreaking it was to see a man struggle with his demons. The band then cancelled their tour (before, curiously, dropping their first single in 34 years). According to Farrell’s wife, the singer is now seeking medical treatment.
Profit undoubtedly plays a role in rock redemption arcs. It’s estimated that the Gallagher brothers could each earn C$90 million from their U.K. and Ireland tour dates alone. But from the fans’ perspective, the desire for familial repair is stronger than the desire to see two brothers hurl insults at each other via the media. The world is ugly enough as it is.
We can thank Matty Healy for providing a case study of what happens when you inject old-school rock ’n’ roll jerkdom into the present day. The 1975 singer made out with fans, sucked their thumbs, devoured raw meat on stage, and made racist remarks. He might see himself as a king of controversy, but the industry has largely shut him out. In 2023, Healy’s band announced they were going on an indefinite hiatus.
While many welcome rock’s Good Guy Era, a knee-jerk refrain you hear from others is that “rock ’n’ roll is dead.” Where is the edge? The danger? The risk? On the heels of MTV’s ultrasafe Video Music Awards ceremony last month, I’ll admit that I, too, look back fondly on the time Rage Against the Machine’s Tim Commerford climbed the stage’s scaffolding to protest Limp Bizkit beating his band for Best Rock Video in 2000.
But it also makes me think of a lyric in the Florence and the Machine’s song “Choreomania”: “You said that rock and roll is dead, but is that just because it has not been resurrected in your image?”
Certainly, the image of the leather-clad rock rebel with a cigarette hanging from his lips has become a relic. But the spirit is alive and thrashing. While rock’s frontmen are straightening their ties, the industry’s women are mussing up their hair.
Chappell Roan is firing up the political discourse, shrugging off the Grammys and telling photographers to “shut the f—k up.” Charli XCX single-handedly defined the summer with an album about cocaine-fueled partying. Queer, sex-positive boldness has become a mainstay (cue: Billie Eilish rolling down a mountain of panties in the recent video for “Guess”). After Phoebe Bridgers smashed her Danelectro guitar during a performance on “Saturday Night Live,” the late David Crosby posted on X that it was “pathetic.” Her response: “little bitch.” Now, that’s rock ’n’ roll.
It remains to be seen whether rock’s Good Guy Era is a temporary or permanent course-correction. Who knows if that life-sized cut-out of Dave Grohl was salvaged on recycling day by a passing fan willing to give him another chance?
But for the time being, the rest of the birdwatching, family-mending, climate-loving rockers are in full force. Whether you want to sing along in the stands or scowl from the sidelines, the choice is yours.