Watch Dave Grohl’s Play Documentary, Featuring New Music
Dave Grohl has been in so many bands, and now he’s apparently decided just to become a band himself. In the new short film Play, Grohl wanted to showcase the magic of becoming a musician, figuring out problems and getting yourself out of jams and working hard. And in Play, after talking to a few kids about music education, that’s exactly what he does.
The bulk of the film is Grohl playing a new instrumental for 23 minutes. He wrote it for seven different instruments, and he plays all of them — including things like piano, which he wasn’t actually sure how to play. In the video, through the magic of CGI, we see seven different Daves Grohl heading into the studio, sitting down at their respective instruments, and bashing the song out. It’s pretty good, too: A big and thundering riff-metal instrumental that seems like exactly the kind of thing Grohl might be making if he wasn’t worried about selling out stadiums. Grohl directed the whole thing himself, so maybe there were actually eight Grohls involved.
We posted the preview for the documentary, and we also posted the Jimmy Kimmel Live interview where Grohl went on to talk about it. And now the whole project is out there in the world. There’s an interactive version of it, where you can focus on the different instrumental tracks and control what comes in when. But you can also see it play out in “real” time below.
You can pre-order a vinyl version of the song here.