Dave Grohl and His Childhood Sweetheart Chose The Beatles’ ‘Eight Days a Week’ as Their Song
Dave Grohl fell in love with The Beatles from the first moment he heard them when he was five years old. After that, he was obsessed.
So, when he and his childhood sweetheart needed a song that encapsulated their love for each other, it wasn’t that hard of a decision. What better song than a Beatles song? Paul McCartney and John Lennon wrote some of the best love songs in the world.
Dave Grohl said the first rock song he ever listened to was The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’
The Foo Fighters frontman played some of his favorite Beatles songs on the BBC’s Radio 2 Beatles. He played “Hey Bulldog,” “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” “All My Loving,” “Eight Days A Week,” “Blackbird,” and more.
However, Grohl saved a specific Beatles song for the middle of his hour-long radio special. Grohl played “Hey Jude,” one of The Beatles’ most popular hits because it was the first Beatles song and rock song he ever heard.
“I’d like to play the first Beatles song I ever heard, and it might be the first record I ever listened to,” Grohl explained. “I remember having a sleepover at a friend’s house when I was four or five years old and listening to ‘Hey Jude.’ I don’t think I’d ever listened to a rock and roll record. This was my introduction and it’s stuck with me ever since.
“I remember that night, laying in my sleeping bag and singing along to the na-na-nas at the end of the song. It was stuck in my head so much I couldn’t sleep.”
The Beatles occupied Grohl’s thoughts for many more nights.
Grohl and his childhood sweetheart chose The Beatles’ ‘Eight Days a Week’ as their song
Another Beatles song represented something special to Grohl. When Grohl and his childhood sweetheart decided to date, they chose The Beatles’ “Eight Days a Week” as their song.
“If there’s one song that reminds me of being a kid, it’s ‘Eight Days a Week,'” Grohl explained. “Now, there was a girl that I was in love with; she will remain nameless, who lived down the street from me when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old.
“We decided that we were going to be boyfriend and girlfriend, which, at the time, was really nothing more than walking to school and talking on the telephone.
“But we had to pick a song, a song that would be our song. So, we picked ‘Eight Days a Week.’ Now, I think my first Beatles records were the red and blue greatest hits compilation that came out. Those were the albums that I would sit down with my Beatles songbook and strum along to.
“I really think that everything I know about music came from those albums and that songbook: melody and harmony and arrangement, composition. I basically just studied that book and those two records for months and months and months and years.
“But my greatest memory really is my sweet neighbor, her name was Beth, who lived down the street, and this was our song we would dance to together. ‘Eight Days a Week.'”
The musician fell in love with a Beatles song again thanks to his daughter Violet
Many Beatles songs have a special meaning for Grohl, including even some of the band’s more obscure songs like “Hey Bulldog.” When Grohl’s daughter Violet was young, she fell in love with the song from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.
She listened to it so much that it got Grohl noticing all the reasons why it’s special. Thanks to his daughter, he fell in love with “Hey Bulldog” again.
“We open the show with a track I performed alongside ELO’s Jeff Lynne at a Grammy celebration of The Beatles in 2014,” Grohl said. “It was to mark the 50th anniversary of their first performance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ and although it wasn’t one of The Beatles’ greatest hits, to me, it’s a quintessential Beatles rock ‘n’ roll song.
“To be honest, one of the reasons why I picked this song is because it was my daughter’s first favorite Beatles song. When Violet was young, maybe six, seven years old, for some reason, she connected to ‘Hey Bulldog’ more than any other Beatles song.
“Of course, I’d heard it before, but I’d never listened to it as deeply as I did with her. I started to notice George’s guitar; I started to notice the bass line, the drums. It’s one of my favorite Beatle songs of all time now; thank you to my daughter Violet.”
Grohl associates various things with Beatles songs, but now he has something even better. Paul McCartney himself. Grohl and Paul are family friends. What could be better than that?
