Dave Grohl has done it all. He was the fantastic hard-hitting drummer for Nirvana, lead singer of the Foo Fighters, played in Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, and was involved with many more bands. The rocker also wrote a best-selling book and has a brand-new horror movie Studio 666, in theaters now. Clearly, the stories he can tell would fill more than just one book, but this most recent one takes the cake. Grohl says he went swimming at one of the most notorious crime scenes in American history, where the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate.
How Did Dave Grohl Find His Way Into This Home?
In a recent interview with Leonie Cooper. the lead singer talks about the movie but more importantly, a creepy story that helped inspire the film. Dave Grohl grew up in suburban Washington D.C., and he would regularly meet with friends at a legendary local landmark. Grohl and his friends would spend their evenings at the house where one of the greatest horror movies of all time was filmed, The Exorcist. “I spent a lot of time hanging around those stairs,” explained Grohl. “There was a liquor store called Dixie Liquor right next door, and they would sell beer to teenagers. So when we were little punks, we would just buy big cans of Foster’s and listen to punk rock, sit on the steps and rock the weekend."
The idea of the band creating and staring in their own horror movie should come as no surprise. However, his love for all things scary, freaky and maybe twisted, takes it one step further. Grohl was the drummer in the band Nirvana, and they went to the house. The famous house, which sits on 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, has a dark history tied to the Manson Family.
"When I was a kid, I was obsessed with horror and knew everything about the Manson Family and those murders," he explains. "Then, in the summer of '92, I was in California with a friend in this little house without air conditioning." Every day, the pair looks for a different swimming pool to try to cope with the sweltering heat. One day, the friend made a particularly odd choice to take a dip in cool water. "My friend called me and said, 'Guess where we're swimming today? The house where Sharon Tate was killed by the Manson Family." It was not the great experience that Grohl had expected. "It was so dark," he said, 30 years after the creepiest pool party of all time, "because it came true, everything I know about it: walking into that house, it is real. And that house has not changed; front door, living room. It has been developed. It was legally erected. It's not cool at all."
The new film is based on a story by Grohl. Studio 666 is also inspired by the shock films of the seventies and from classic movies by bands like The Beatles' Help! and The Monkees' Head. Recording music in a twisted location is nothing new; in the early '90s, Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails arrived at the house in Los Angeles where Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by Charles Manson's group. There, they completed their second album and recorded some of their tracks that would be featured on the third. You can purchase tickers and find showtimes for Studio 666 on the official website.