Foo Fighters Frontman Dave Grohl Reveals Hearing Loss; he says he’s been reading lips for 20 years

It is a sad irony that one of the singers who screeches the loudest when singing, so loud that it could render one temporarily deaf, actually has to suffer from this reality. Dave Grohl, well-known leader of the Foo Fighters, just confessed that he is “fucking deaf” on the radio show The Howard Stern Show.

Indeed, so many decades of ‘rocking’ up and down the stage, night after night, are taking their toll. The 53-year-old vocalist and drummer explained that he has been reading the lips of others for the past 20 years. That is, more or less since the start of the new millennium, when he positioned himself times like these and Best of you.

“I haven’t had them tested in a long time, I mean, I know what they’re going to say: ‘He has tinnitus hearing damage in his left ear, more morseo than in his right ear,'” he said of having his ears checked by a doctor. .

Grohl said he finds it extremely difficult to hear other people in public places, and has had more trouble during the pandemic, as masks cover the mouths of others and he can no longer rely on lip reading.

“If you were sitting next to me here at dinner, I wouldn’t understand a word you said to me, the whole time,” he told Stern. “In a crowded restaurant, that’s worse. That’s the worst thing about this pandemic… I’m like, ‘I am a rock musician. And I’m deaf, I can’t hear what you’re saying‘“.

According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, tinnitus, which Grohl says is in his left ear, is a ringing noise that can develop over time when continuous noise exposure damages tiny hair cells. Sensory cells in the inner ear that help transmit sound to the brain.

Despite Grohl’s conversational difficulties, he said he can still hear “the smallest things” when recording in the studio and mixing albums. “My ears are still tuned to certain frequencies, and if I hear something that’s a little bit out of tune, or a cymbal that’s not bright enough or something like that, in the mix, I can really hear the minutiae of everything we do,” he said. .

While many performers use in-ear monitors while performing to provide a direct source of sound and protect their ears, Grohl does not, which he believes “removes sound from the natural atmosphere.” “I want to hear the audience in front of me and I want to turn around so I can hear Taylor [Hawkins] right there, and listen to Pat [Smear]go here and listen to Chris [Shiflett] and things like that,” he explained. “It just interferes with your spatial understanding of where you are on stage.”