Watching your heroes fawn over their very own heroes is a pretty meta experience. After all, their genius wasn’t just birthed out of nowhere, they too once spent hours in their bedrooms reading the liner notes, fumbling over solos and sticking up posters of their favourite artists in the hopes of one day emulating their greatness.

Dave Grohl’s status as a music fan, above all, is pretty well known – the Foo Fighters frontman often sounds off on acts he’s hyping, recently sounding off on how much he adores young SoundCloud rapper Lil Pump. 

Now, in a recent interview with British GQ, Grohl opened up about who his favourite shredders of all time are. The Foo Fighters frontman, who’s never been a stranger to wearing his love for Led Zeppelin on his sleeve, noted that Jimmy Page is his “favourite soloist”, praising the emotion evoked in his playing style.

“Jimmy Page, I think, is my favorite soloist. I love the way that he was always teetering on the edge of total chaos, but he knew how to place every note in a space that really drew emotion.

He also mentioned that he has a particular soft spot for artists who don’t seek “perfection” in their sound, rather expressing his fondness for “fearlessness”.

“So when you watch a movie like The Song Remains the Same,or any live footage from 1971 or 1973, or 1975, and even the earlier stuff, he’s just going for it. It’s that sort of fearlessness that I respect most in musicians, not perfection or any sort of clean technical proficiency. I really like to see musicians right on the edge of falling apart. He did that in the most beautiful way.”

Grohl, showing off his music-nerd aptitude, went on to praise the work of American guitarist Ry Cooder, noting that his 1984 effort, a soundtrack to the film Paris, Texas was his “favourite album of all time”.

“That being said, there is an instrumental record by an American legend named Ry Cooder. He scored a 1984 movie called ‘Paris, Texas’ in the ’80s, and the soundtrack to that film is my favourite album of all time.”

“It sort of paints this sort of barren desert landscape, but he does it with a slide guitar. It’s just so simple and emotive, and amazing. So one of those two.”

Check out the entire interview below:

The article was originally published on Tone Deaf