Visit of Foo Fighters frontman gave Warren global attention via Internet

David Grohl Alley dedication ceremony

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David Grohl Alley Dedication in Warren

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8.1.2009 Famous Musician, David Grohl of the Foo Fighters, performs at the dedication of an alley bearing his name in the city of Warren, OH, where he was born.

By Ed Runyan

A grungy alley was picked on purpose to reflect the rocker’s personality.

WARREN — When Warren-born rocker David Grohl came to town last weekend, he told 1,500 people that his mom went to Boardman High School, his dad went to Niles McKinley, his grandfather worked at Republic Steel, and his other grandparents met in Warren.

Then he played three of his best-known songs and gave a downtrodden town a huge lift.

“I know you guys probably don’t imagine this to be a resort or vacation area, but when I was a kid, man, I used to love coming to hang out here every summer. This is one of my favorite places in the world,” he said.

He comes to Trumbull County now to visit his father, Jim, and stepmother Renie Grohl at their home in Howland. He visited his grandparents’ house on Orchard Avenue near Stevens Park all through his youth.

Grohl, 40, famous for his years as drummer for the band Nirvana and now frontman for the chart-topping Foo Fighters, lived in Warren a couple of years after he was born in 1969. He lived in Virginia with his mom in the years after that.

“Most of my family is from Niles and the Youngstown and the Warren area,” he said, drawing cheers.

“I’m very proud ... to be from here,” he said, “and as long as you want to hear music, and as long as I’m going to play it, I hope we get to hang out together,” he said.

Those words, followed by a three-song performance of Foo Fighters hits, caused local radio personality Fast Freddy to declare that Grohl had given Warren its greatest moment ever.

It certainly ranks up there for Sgt. Joe O’Grady of the Warren Police Department.

After first performing “Times Like These” with just his voice, a microphone and an acoustic guitar, he dedicated ”My Hero” to O’Grady.

“There goes my hero, watch him as he goes. There goes my hero, he’s ordinary,” Grohl sang as O’Grady stood just off stage, looking off into the distance.

O’Grady, along with Fast Freddy, made Grohl’s performance possible by asking city council to name a grungy, little-used downtown alley after Grohl.

“I was like ‘What?’ I couldn’t believe it,” O’Grady recalls of the song, one of the Foo Fighters’ most popular.

“I can usually handle it. I had to look away,” he said.

“It took me a couple days, and I went, ‘Did that really happen? He did that song?’” O’Grady said.

People have told O’Grady that the songs, the connection Grohl made with the audience made a lasting impression on others as well.

“If you were there, you were a part of it,” O’Grady said. ”It is a part of Warren’s history.”

O’Grady suspected that Grohl would attend the alley dedication, but he wasn’t sure until about a day beforehand.

But when Grohl did confirm his attendance, sites all over the Internet mentioned it.

Rolling Stone’s Web site was one of the first sites to run the story, but within an hour of the performance, videos were appearing on You Tube and on hundreds of other Web sites, said Jennifer Campbell, volunteer promotions chairperson for the organization Main Street Warren, which teamed up to help promote the alley dedication and a weeklong Music is Art festival.

“We definitely got worldwide coverage, which is exciting,” Campbell said.

“It went way beyond my expectations,” O’Grady said of the transformation of the alley, performances by local musicians and Grohl’s free concert.

“It renewed people’s hope,” said Campbell, adding that she, O’Grady and others are examining the possibility of showcasing the achievements of other notables in the future, such as movie director Chris Columbus from Champion. The festival is expected to return next year, and it might include a film festival of Columbus movies, she said.

O’Grady said people have asked why he proposed honoring Grohl with an alley instead of something nicer. The answer has to do with Grohl’s personality and background, O’Grady said.

At age 17, Grohl quit high school and joined the Washington, D.C., hard-core punk band Scream. He became drummer for the grunge band Nirvana in 1990, at about the time the band became a mainstream success. Its lead singer, Kurt Cobain, was labeled spokesman of Generation X.

“We didn’t want a tree-lined, nice, perfect street,” O’Grady said. “I wanted the hard-core look to reflect the hard-core rock,” he said. The former Market Alley, running south and parallel to the main commercial block on Courthouse Square, was also the only place that had a New York City type of feel to it, he said.

“It’s a place you would not want to walk down at night,” O’Grady said.

Over two years, O’Grady worked to get the alley renamed. It’s been cleaned up over that time and now features artwork, but it needs lighting to make it safer, he said.

O’Grady recently learned that a smaller alley running south from David Grohl Alley next to the Warren Parking Deck had historical significance that needed to be recognized also.

He went to work getting one more sign made to mark Thumm Court, the location where Charlie Thumm opened a bakery in 1850. Charlie Thumm was the great-grandfather of Augie Thumm, who runs today’s 100-year-old Thumm’s bicycle shop a short distance away on West Market Street.

Jim Dalessandro, executive director of Main Street Warren, said Grohl’s appearance in Warren was so memorable because he was such a “down-to-earth guy” who spoke and sang “from the heart.”

“He thanked people; he hugged people. It was backward. He was thanking us, and we should be thanking him,” Dalessandro said.

Warren had the highest unemployment rate in the state in June and has been hit hard by job losses at Delphi Packard and General Motors in recent years. Crime has surged this summer.

“We may be at the bottom of the bottom right now,” O’Grady said. “If we see a ray of sunshine, he [Grohl] did it,” O’Grady added.

Not everyone knew who David Grohl was when Warren City Council started talking about naming an alley after him last year, but Kelly Crowley, 18, of Howland did.

She’s been a fan since she was about 12, has attended Foo Fighters concerts in Cleveland and Detroit with her father, Tom Crowley, and owns David Grohl biographies and dozens of Nirvana and Foo Fighters CDs and DVDs.

When she learned about five years ago that Grohl was born in Warren and has relatives here, she read up on him.

“He’s my favorite rock star,” she said.

When she found out Grohl would be coming to Warren, she hoped this would be her chance to meet him.

With a little help from friends, she got backstage after the show and spoke to Grohl and got an autograph.

“It was awesome,” she said.

runyan@vindy.com