Dave Grohl learned to “embrace” being “different” after being diagnosed with a “crooked spine” as a kid.
The Foo Fighters rocker, 52, has opened up about his curved spine diagnosis when he was seven, and how he felt “a sense of shame” at first, because he had to wear a correction shoe, before growing to love the “feeling of being strange”.
The former Nirvana drummer is quoted by The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column as saying: “I’ve always felt like a bit of an alien, which obviously I learned to embrace over time. When diagnosed with a crooked spine at the age of seven, I had to begin wearing a small lift on my left shoe to slowly correct the problem.
“I felt a sense of shame at first as I wasn’t allowed to wear the cool sneakers other kids wore, but that later became a sort of empowerment. I was different and I liked it.
“I didn’t want to be like the other kids, as crooked as I was. I liked the feeling of being strange. I still do.”
The ‘Learn to Fly’ hitmaker opening up about the condition comes after he previously urged for mental health to be taken more seriously.
Paying tribute to late Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell and Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington – who took their own lives within weeks of each other in 2017 – the ‘Times Like These’ star slammed the “stigma attached” to depression and mental health.
He said at the time: “When it comes to someone like Chris Cornell or Chester, you know, depression is a disease, and everybody goes through it their own way … I just always immediately think of their families, their bandmates, and just … going through something like suicide, it’s a long road, and Chris was such a beautiful guy, man. He was the sweetest person. He was so talented. He had so much to offer that it was a real shock to hear that he had gone.
“But you know, I think that mental health and depression is something that people should really take seriously. There’s a stigma attached to it that’s unfortunate, because just as you take care of yourselves in every other way, I think it’s important that people try and take care of themselves in that way, too. And it ain’t easy, you know? Life’s hard.”