Dave Grohl described the experience of being visited by his late bandmate Taylor Hawkins in a dream, becoming emotional as he spoke about it.

The Foo Fighters drummer’s death in 2022 was one of a series of tragedies that sent Grohl into therapy, he told the Guardian in a new interview, adding that he’d had over 400 sessions.

“I have had these dreams that seem like visitations,” Grohl explained. “Whether it’s from my mother, or my old friend Jimmy, or [former Nirvana bandmate] Kurt [Cobain], or my father. And in the dreams, I know that I’m dreaming, but those people are here. And it’s as if they’ve never left.”

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He continued: “I fell asleep on a couch… in front of a television. I thought that I’d woken up, and [Hawkins] was sitting right next to me. It was so real. He was happy.

“His hair looked great; he was tan. The first thing I said was: ‘Oh my God, we miss you so much.’ He smiled. I said, ‘Where are you?’ And he smiled again and said: ‘Dude ––’ And I woke up. I was like: ‘Wow, I almost had it!”

Grohl said he’d tried to avoid dealing with Hawkins’ passing, as he’d done with other challenging issues – but the death of his mother later in 2022 was different.

“I was with her every day leading up to when she passed,” he said. “I was with her when she passed. And she never lost her spirit, her light. … I let into my heart. Rather than just kind of keeping it up in my head and continuing on.”

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That experience, along with therapy, helped him understand that he’d spent too much of his life being “pulled in different directions emotionally without having this anchor, this centered feeling.”

With that realization, a dream he’d kept having for 20 years went away: “I walked into a house set on a hill in the countryside. There was this door that would lead to an entirely different house: modern, very white, completely different than the other side which is very warm and woodsy.

“In every dream there was someone with me and I’d say, ‘Oh my God, you have to check this out.’ I would open this little door and bring someone into this other space.”

Now, having learned that “there was this disconnection or division within myself, I don’t have that dream anymore.” He added: “And so a lot of the new album has to do with exactly that.”