Dave Grohl on AC/DC, epic gigs, being a father and the greatest Grammy after-party of all time
EXCLUSIVE: He may be a family man now but when it comes to performing Foo Fighters rocker Dave Grohl says he “still f***en loves it”.
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THE Nicest Dad in Rock probably wasn’t a title Dave Grohl was shooting for when he started Foo Fighters in 1994.
The “band” was in fact a single-handed recording project for the Nirvana drummer as he grappled with his musical future after the death of Kurt Cobain.
Now, 23 years later, he fronts one of the world’s biggest stadium rock bands by night and flips pancakes for his three daughters most mornings. Even on tour.
The band has just wrapped an American leg of their Concrete and Gold world tour before they head to Australia in January and Grohl is exhausted.
It’s not because of the three-hour sets. He decided he would fly home to Los Angeles after gigs so he could sleep in his own bed and spend mornings with his wife Jordyn and their daughters Violet, Harper and Ophelia.
Great plan, right?
“You know the crazy thing I started doing? We have been hitting it pretty hard since the last time I saw you (in Sydney in August) and we’ve been bouncing around the world playing,” he says. He tells me he is chatting while shopping for pork tenderloins at the local market.
“For the last three weeks, I decided ‘F--- it! I am going to fly home every night before a day off.’ So I would race off stage, jump on a plane and get home at 1am, make pancakes for the family, get them to the bus stop for school, cook dinner and then head to the gig.
“And it’s finally got to me. I think I would like to see what it would be like to sleep at home for a couple of nights. My life, right?”
Grohl is kidding. He loves his life. He knows it is a privileged one. But even the most seasoned rock dogs get burnt out and the Foo Fighters frontman said he once asked his friend, Sir Paul McCartney, the legend who just stole Australia’s heart with his own epic three-hour concerts on the One on One tour, how he manages to keep his stamina levels high.
“Yeah, I’m not sure Best Of You is gonna sound so hot when I am 70,” Grohl says.
“Paul and I were having a bottle of wine and talking one night and I said ‘You do these 1½ hour long soundchecks and get up on stage and do three hour sets and hang out all night and then do it again. How do you do it?’
“He said ‘I just do it’. Honestly, when it comes to that inspiration or motivation or fire to do it, I think that comes from a deeper place, a great love of music, and that s--- starts when you are a kid and hopefully you can ride it for the rest of your life.
“Last night in the dressing room, we were all looking at each other and everyone looked f — ing beat but the minute we hit the stage ... I still love it, I still f---ing love it, playing these shows out in the middle of nowhere to people who have never seen you before.”
Anyone who has witnessed the Foo Fighters in concert knows Grohl loves his audience and, in an era when the concert dollar is worth a lot more than your album sales, keeping faith with fans is everything.
He will chug beers with the bros, host onstage proposals, run the length and breadth of the stage and catwalk to entertain the thousands of people at that show whether in the rafters or catching his sweat from the front rows.
The 48-year-old rocker erupts into laughter as he recalls the previous night’s concert in Casper, Wyoming, where three grandmothers in the front row stole the show.
“They were up against the barriers at the front, next to seven-year-olds, next to bikers, next to millennials,” Grohl says.
“I named one of them Cherry Cola and serenaded her all night long, jumped into the crowd to take a selfie with them.
“The people who come to rock shows ... I love it.”
Rock shows have become a de facto church to mourn and honour fallen heroes in recent weeks, with the Foo Fighters paying tribute to Malcolm Young and Tom Petty in their set.
Grohl posted a heartfelt dedication to Young when the AC/DC founder died last month, recalling the night he and a friend went to a midnight screening on the Australian band’s concert film at a local cinema in Washington.
That film, Let There Be Rock, changed his life, turning the 11-year-old boy onto the energy, charisma, reckless abandon and humour of AC/DC’s brand of rock’n’roll.
“There is a golden rule that you should never cover a song better than everything you’ve got, or at least save it to the end and we started the show in Mexico with Let There Be Rock. The set was all downhill from there,” he says.
“There has always been a lot of AC/DC in my life. Now my daughter Harper is taking drum lessons and she is obsessed with AC/DC. It’s all we listen to in my car right now.”
Foo Fighters will be in Australia when the Grammy Awards are on, where they are again nominated for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance.
While most rock bands regard awards shows with barely contained cynicism, Grohl is a Grammys fan who says he has enjoyed some of the best nights of his life backstage and at the after parties, if not during the interminable hours of the actual ceremony.
He excitedly remembers one of his favourite Grammys, and like most Grohl stories, it’s a long one.
Invited to present an award in 2014, he and Jordyn plan to skip the after parties and head out to dinner after the ceremony.
He invites his band mates and a restaurant is booked. Then Jordyn receives a text from McCartney’s wife Nancy asking what they are doing after the Grammys.
The McCartneys are now on for dinner. Then The Beatle calls Grohl to inform him he has bumped into the members of AC/DC at his hotel and would it be OK if they came to dinner.
“Holy s---! You never see AC/DC out in public. I called the restaurant and booked a bigger room,” he says.
Next up on the “what are you doing after the Grammys?” text exchanges was Ben Jaffe from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who worked with the Foo Fighters on their Sonic Highways project.
Not only did Jaffe want in on this soon-to-be legendary after Grammys dinner but hey, his New Orleans marching band would provide the entertainment.
So the Foos, AC/DC and a Beatle are having dinner and in walks the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, playing as they make their way through the restaurant.
“Everyone is looking like ‘What the f--- is going on?’ But then everyone gets up and is swing dancing with their wives for the next four or five songs,” Grohl says.,
“At one point Brian Johnson looks at me and says ‘I am actually f---ing happy’. So yeah, I have a soft spot for the Grammys.”
The Concrete and Gold tour opens on January 20 at Perth’s nib Stadium ahead of shows in Adelaide (Coopers Stadium, January 23), Brisbane (Suncorp Stadium, January 25), Sydney (ANZ Stadium, January 27) and Melbourne (Etihad Stadium, January 30).
For your chance to see Foo Fighters on their Concrete and Gold World Tour next January in your city, playing tracks off their ninth studio album of the same name, head to www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/competitions to enter.
Originally published as Dave Grohl on AC/DC, epic gigs, being a father and the greatest Grammy after-party of all time
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