Foo Fighters frontman David Grohl appeared on The Howard Stern Show last week and made a startling announcement. He said that he was “f- – – ing deaf.” The 53-year said that he had been reading lips from the past 20 years. However, the pandemic exacerbated the situation as people wore masks and he was unable to have conversations in public places.
He explained in detail how he wouldn’t understand a word of what the person next to him was saying. He said when people came up to him and spoke to him, their words sounded like “garbled noise.” He said that he would say that he was a “rock musician” and that he was “f – – -ing deaf” and that he could not understand what they were saying.
Grohl suffers from tinnitus. It develops over a period of time, when tiny hairs in the ear that are responsible for transmitting sound to the brain get affected by constant exposure to sound. A person with tinnitus experiences a ringing sound in the ear.
Grohl also commented that despite suffering from tinnitus, his ears were attuned to certain frequencies. He said that he knew if something was out of tune and could even gauge if a cymbal was not bright enough in the mix. He said that he would actually hear the “minutiae of everything” they had done in a particular song.
He also said that he never wore in-ear monitors and that the same person mixed his monitors for more than three decades. That person ensured that the sound on stage for Grohl was perfect.
Although Grohl has come out in the open to speak of his tinnitus, it is actually quite common among musicians. Rockstars perform using loud instruments and are surrounded by loud audiences. This huge surfeit of sound affects their hearing.
Other musicians whose hearing has been affected due to professional hazards include
Pete Townshend (The Who)
Roger Daltrey
Neil Young
Eric Clapton.
However, all these musicians continue to make popular music, despite their sound issues.
