Watch an Epic Drum Battle, Pitting a 9‑Year-Old Girl Against Foo Fighter Dave Grohl

Foo Fight­er Dave Grohl, for­mer­ly of Nir­vana, and Nan­di Bushell, an Ipswich ele­men­tary school­er, have some­thing in com­mon besides their incred­i­ble com­mand of the drums.

By all appear­ances, both seem to have ben­e­fit­ed from being reared by ground­ed, encour­ag­ing par­ents.

Nan­di, at 10, like­ly has a few more years under her folks’ roof despite her grow­ing renown—she’s jammed with Lenny Kravitz, gone viral in last year’s Argos Christ­mas advert, and most recent­ly, matched Grohl beat for beat in an epic drum bat­tle, above.

Nan­di demon­strat­ed a nat­ur­al rhyth­mic ear at an ear­ly age, bob­bing along to the Tele­tub­bies while still in dia­pers.

Of course, every­thing she’s achieved thus far can be con­sid­ered to have occurred at an ear­ly age.

On the oth­er hand, it was half a life­time ago when her father, a soft­ware engi­neer and self-described “mas­sive music fan” intro­duced the then-5-year-old to “Hey, Jude,” as part of a week­ly tra­di­tion where­in he makes pan­cakes with his chil­dren while shar­ing YouTube links to favorite songs.

She was imme­di­ate­ly tak­en with Ringo Starr, and the joy he exud­ed behind his kit.

Short­ly there­after, she passed a math exam, earn­ing a trip to Toys “R” Us to pick out a promised treat. Her eye went imme­di­ate­ly to a £25 kid­die drum set.

The plas­tic toy was a far cry from the pro­fes­sion­al kit she uses today, but she’s shown her­self to be adapt­able in a recent series of video tuto­ri­als for Daniel Bedingfield’s “Gonna Get Through This,” encour­ag­ing view­ers who lack equip­ment to bang on whatever’s handy—colanders, pot lids, bis­cuit tins… She rec­om­mends kebab skew­ers tipped with cel­lo­phane tape for the stick­less.

Her YouTube chan­nel def­i­nite­ly reveals a pref­er­ence for hard rock.

Her father, John, dis­likes play­ing pub­licly, but occa­sion­al­ly accom­pa­nies her on gui­tar, hop­ing she’ll grow accus­tomed to play­ing with oth­er peo­ple.

Doc­u­ment­ing his daughter’s per­for­mances lies more with­in his com­fort zone as he told Drum Talk TV in a very glitchy, ear­ly-pan­dem­ic vir­tu­al inter­view. Asked by host Dan Shin­der to share tips for oth­er par­ents of young drum­mers, par­tic­u­lar­ly girls, he coun­sels expos­ing them to as many musi­cal gen­res as pos­si­ble, nur­tur­ing their desire to play, and resolv­ing to have as much fun as pos­si­ble.

It’s clear that Nan­di is hav­ing a ball twirling her sticks and whal­ing on the drum part of Foo Fight­ers’ hit “Ever­long,” in a video uploaded last month.

Grohl got wind of the video and the chal­lenge con­tained there­in.

He took the bait, respond­ing with an “epic” video of his own, play­ing a set of drums bor­rowed from his 11-year-old daugh­ter:

I haven’t played that song since the day I record­ed it in 1997, but Nan­di, in the last week I’ve got­ten at least 100 texts from peo­ple all over the world say­ing ‘This girl is chal­leng­ing you to a drum-off, what are you going to do?’

Look, I’ve seen all your videos. I’ve seen you on TV. You’re an incred­i­ble drum­mer. I’m real­ly flat­tered that you picked some of my songs… and you’ve done them all per­fect­ly. So today, I’m gonna give you some­thing you may not have heard before. This is a song called “Dead End Friends” from a band called Them Crooked Vul­tures… now the ball is in your court.

(Fast for­ward to the final thir­ty sec­onds if you want to see the ulti­mate in hap­py dances.)

The young chal­lenger calls upon the rock Gods of old—Bon­zo, Bak­er, Peart, Moon—to back her side for “THE GREATEST ROCK BATTLE IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK!!!”

(In addi­tion to drum lessons, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ipswich Rock Project and  junior jam ses­sions, it looks like her act­ing class­es at Stage­coach Per­form­ing Arts Ipswich are so pay­ing off.)

Five days after Grohl threw down his gaunt­let, she’s back on her drum throne, clad in a pre­teen ver­sion of Grohl’s buf­fa­lo check shirt and black pants, her snare bear­ing the leg­end “Grohl rocks.”

That sen­ti­ment would sure­ly please Grohl’s moth­er, Vir­ginia, author of From Cra­dle to Stage: Sto­ries from the Moth­ers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars.

A born enter­tain­er in his mother’s opin­ion, Grohl didn’t take up music until he was around the age Nan­di is now, after which it monop­o­lized his focus and ener­gy, lead­ing to a dis­as­trous 6th grade report card.

Rather than freak­ing out about gen­er­al edu­ca­tion dips, Vir­ginia, a pub­lic school teacher, was sup­port­ive when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arose for him to tour Europe at 17 with the Wash­ing­ton, DC band Scream after the depar­ture of drum­mer Kent Stax.

Wise move. Her son may be a high school drop-out, but he’s using his fame to shine a spot­light on the con­cerns of teach­ers, who are essen­tial work­ers in his view. Check out his essay in The Atlantic, in which he writes that he wouldn’t trust the U.S. Sec­re­tary of Per­cus­sion to tell him how to play “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” if they had nev­er sat behind a drum set:

It takes a cer­tain kind of per­son to devote their life to this dif­fi­cult and often-thank­less job. I know because I was raised in a com­mu­ni­ty of them. I have mowed their lawns, paint­ed their apart­ments, even babysat their chil­dren, and I’m con­vinced that they are as essen­tial as any oth­er essen­tial work­ers. Some even raise rock stars! Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine, Adam Levine, Josh Groban, and Haim are all chil­dren of school work­ers (with hope­ful­ly more aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly reward­ing results than mine).

He’s also leav­ing time in his sched­ule for anoth­er drum bat­tle:

Ok, @Nandi_Bushell .…..you win round one.…but it ain’t over yet! Buck­le up, cuz I have some­thing spe­cial in mind…

Stay tuned, Dave https://t.co/THyApmHHep — Foo Fight­ers (@foofighters) Sep­tem­ber 4, 2020

Watch more of Nan­di Bushell’s drum and gui­tar cov­ers on her par­ent-mon­i­tored YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fun­da­men­tals of Jazz & Rock Drum­ming Explained in Five Cre­ative Min­utes

The Case for Why Ringo Starr Is One of Rock’s Great­est Drum­mers

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.