(Credits: Alamy)
Dave Grohl is probably the closest modern equivalent to an authorial voice on rock music, having been around in the industry for long enough to know what he’s talking about but still with enough skin in the game to give any young wannabe stars a run for their money himself. To that end, he can spot a good tune rising when he sees it, knowing what lives up to the predecessors of rock and roll, as well as what frankly insults it.
In that spirit, being able to combine the forces of today’s stars with the gods who laid the path before them, Grohl has a casting ear over what artists and tunes merit an other-worldly status. Along a line of cronies from Kurt Cobain to Paul McCartney, getting that seal of approval from the Foo Fighters frontman is no mean feat – but nevertheless, there is one particular song that once caught his eye for embodying a cut above the rest in classic sound.
Grohl told Mojo in 2014: “I was in a clothing store with my daughter and this song came on. I had one of those ‘Shazam’ moments: ‘I need to know what this is!’ Because I have an affinity for any lullaby vocal over a trippy Jesus & Mary Chain track. And I fell so in love with this song. It’s ‘Johnny Jupiter’ by Haunted Hearts, which is Dee Dee Penny from Dum Dum Girls, and her husband who’s the singer with Crocodiles.”
The husband-and-wife duo may be a lesser-known force, but their blazing guitar and dreamy vocals captured a spirit for Grohl that harkened back to the rock greatness of days of old. He continued: “Man, when those two sing! Imagine Siouxsie Sioux and Lou Reed duetting. I listened to it so much that my daughter finally said: ‘Daddy! Enough with the song! Turn it off!’ I became semi-obsessed.”
Although released in 2014, ‘Johnny Jupiter’ has a loose, psychedelic vibe that would not see it out of place in any preceding decade – it has the dreaminess of the 1960s, the swirling colour of the 1970s, and an edge of synth new wave of the 1980s. It’s easy to see, in this context, why Grohl would make a seemingly bizarre comparison between Sioux and Reed, bringing together the forces of post-punk and underground rock to cataclysmic effect.
Admittedly, none of those things scream Grohl or the Foo Fighters, but the point is that the frontman is never scared to venture into new lands and explore uncharted territory in the rock world. That entire ethos stands on the basis of bringing together chalk and cheese elements and somehow making them a delectable mix – which is none more so evident than in ‘Johnny Jupiter’, which is all at once a fresh musical tonic but equally transcendental to every sonic era.
Ultimately, over the years of the respective heydays of Sioux and Reed, they transformed the entire scene to pave the way for new sonic adventures to arise, whether in classic grunge like Grohl or swirling psychedelia like Haunted Hearts. All of it comes together as a storming – somewhat dysfunctional – genre, but one that enlivens even the most well-versed of rock spirits no matter what direction it travels in.
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