Dave Grohl explained why he wrote Ian MacKaye that letter all those years ago

By Marah Eakin | June 3, 2015 | 7:00pm

Aux Features Music

Dave Grohl has explained that thrash-friendly letter he sent to Ian MacKaye back in the early ’80s. In a video interview with NME, Grohl said that he wrote MacKaye because he wanted MacKaye’s label, Dischord, to put out his band Mission Impossible’s demo. That didn’t pan out, obviously, but Grohl says he still holds out hope, joking that “if the Foos could do a Dischord single, then we could break up. Done deal.” (Attention: Dischord Records accounting department.)

The interview also addresses why in the world MacKaye would have a kept a letter from a random teenage fan for more than 20 years, with Grohl saying the punk legend is “a meticulous collector. If you go to his house, he has everything—all of the little old four-track tapes from, like, Minor Threat and Bad Brains.” (Those being things any self-respecting punk fan hopes to holy hell MacKaye would have kept.) Grohl went on to say MacKaye “sure as shit didn’t keep [the letter] because he thought something was going to happen.” Yeah, because why would anyone have thought that?