Dave Grohl stepped in quietly to help Reed Mullin in the years before the Corrosion Of Conformity drummer died, covering the cost of rehab himself. Pepper Keenan revealed the detail publicly for the first time in a new interview.
The C.O.C. guitarist and vocalist appeared on “The Garza Podcast“, hosted by Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza, and was asked whether the band had known that 2018’s No Cross No Crown would be their last record with Mullin.
“No. Well, his health was not well. And we tried everything. [We] didn’t know. He just couldn’t get it together, man. And we tried everything. And [former Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman] Dave Grohl offered help — Dave Grohl had helped him with rehab, paid for it out of his own pocket, which was very kind. [I’ll] never forget that. And, yeah, I didn’t know,” Keenan said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
The gesture makes sense against a friendship that stretched back more than three decades. Long before Nirvana, Grohl played in the Washington D.C. band Dain Bramage, whose record came out on a small independent label Mullin was running from Raleigh, North Carolina. Grohl has spoken repeatedly about Mullin‘s influence on his own playing, telling Rolling Stone in 2015 that Mullin was “my drumming hero when I was 15 or 16 years old.”
The two later worked together directly. Mullin conceived the all-star punk project Teenage Time Killers with C.O.C. bassist Mike Dean and My Ruin guitarist Mick Murphy, recording its lone album Greatest Hits Vol. 1 at Grohl‘s Studio 606 in Los Angeles, with Grohl contributing bass. That 2015 release also drew in Corey Taylor, Randy Blythe, Jello Biafra, Brian Baker, Nick Oliveri and Lee Ving.
Keenan described how he and guitarist Woody Weatherman now think about their late bandmate.
“Now me and Woody look back at things and we have nothing but wonderful stories about Reed,” Keenan continued. “‘Cause when he was at the top of his game, he was a f**king animal on the drums. You couldn’t touch him in terms of creativity and moving that type of music forward. He’s one of the O.G.s of the crossover s**t back in the day, so he truly had helped invent something.”
He added: “Yeah. It’s just weird s**t. You can’t plan anything. You can’t map it out. You’d be crazy to even try. You never f**king know what’s gonna happen.”
Garza asked whether Mullin had understood how far his health had slipped. Keenan was careful in his answer, and turned it toward the version of events that did not happen.
“It’s a hard thing to get a grip on things like that if you’re not in it. It’s hard to say… I do think if he’d had gotten through all this stuff and could’ve cleaned everything up, and sometimes it takes that. And then if he was here right now, I think the band would be tearing s**t up. I think he would come full circle and he would’ve been one of the people not scared to go backwards either, get back into it. But who knows? You can’t go there,” Keenan said.
Mullin co-founded Corrosion Of Conformity in Raleigh in 1982 with Weatherman and Dean, three teenagers building a hardcore punk band that would help create the crossover sound bridging punk and metal. He played on the group’s first six albums, including Eye For An Eye, Animosity, Blind and Deliverance.
A back injury forced him out in 2001. He returned as a full member in 2010.
Health problems sidelined him repeatedly in his final years, among them an alcohol-related seizure in June 2016. No Cross No Crown in 2018 was the first album to reunite the Keenan, Mullin, Dean and Weatherman lineup since 2000’s America’s Volume Dealer. It was also the last.
Mullin died on January 27, 2020, at 53. No cause of death was made public. The band called him “a friend, a brother and pioneer” in their announcement.
Weatherman offered his own reflection earlier this year on the “This Day In Metal” podcast, describing a loss that hit harder because the two had known each other since high school. He said he could hear Mullin in the band’s new material even without him playing on it, moments where Stanton Moore landed a fill that made Weatherman and Keenan look at each other and think of their old drummer.
“[Reed and I] went to high school together, he and I. [His death] was an immense loss. It wasn’t entirely unexpected — he had some health issues and stuff — but it was a hard hit. Anytime you lose a brother like that, it’s tough. I feel like his spirit appears on the new [Corrosion of Conformity] record [the upcoming Good God / Baad Man], in my opinion, even though he’s not actually playing on it. I think Stanton [Moore, who played drums on Good God / Baad Man] hit on some of his signature-type licks and stuff. He would be playing things, and Pepper [Keenan, Corrosion of Conformity guitarist/vocalist] and I would look at each other and go, ‘Man, that sounds like a little fill that Reed would’ve probably put there.’ So he’s kind of still with us in that way,” he said at the time.
“It’s a tough loss,” he added. “He’s been gone now six years. But the train don’t stop, man. Corrosion is a bigger thing than its individual members, we always kind of say. It’s a family.”
Good God / Baad Man, the band’s eleventh studio album, arrived April 3 through Nuclear Blast. It was their first in eight years and their first written without Mullin. Moore, who had previously played on 2005’s In The Arms Of God, handled drums. Bobby Landgraf took over on bass following Dean‘s departure. Warren Riker produced.
