by Dave Grohl
We sat at her desk, and with my head hung in shame, I explained that I wanted to drop out of high school and tour the world. Her response?
“YOU’D BETTER BE GOOD.”
I can only think that, after twenty-five years of teaching underachievers like myself, my mother knew deep down I was not college material. But she did have faith in me. She saw the light in me and understood that my heart, soul, and drive were not things you learn from any blackboard or textbook under the hypnotic buzz of the classroom lights. She would often say, “It’s not always the kid that fails the school. Sometimes it’s the school that fails the kid.” So, as she always had, she gave me the freedom to wander, find my path, and find myself.
My father was a different story.
Sitting in the principal’s office flanked by my parents, I was read the riot act and given a most hopeless life forecast of poverty and despair by my father and the guidance counselor. I was a worthless punk in their eyes, a hoodlum rat with nothing to offer other than to fill their tanks with gas on the weekends or shine their loafers at the airport as they waited for their next flight, but I sat there and took it all like Rocky Balboa, thinking, Fuck you. I’ll prove you both wrong. My favorite line? “You probably do all the things that a kid your age shouldn’t do, like smoke cigarettes and drink coffee.” Coffee? Since when was coffee considered a class A drug? I proudly confessed to both.
As we walked to our separate cars in the parking lot, my father got one more jab in before officially disowning me for good, screaming, “AND STAY OFF THE DRUGS!!!” It was the most trembling, Bob Dole–esque display of tight-ass Republican fury I have ever seen, still to this day. I could only laugh. His degradation couldn’t hurt me anymore. I was finally off the hook, and so was he (I seem to remember his driving a new, forest-green Plymouth Volare soon after I left school and can only conclude that the meager college fund he had set aside for me was immediately withdrawn and blown on this most pimp-ass ride). The cord was officially cut, and I was free to bolt.
I’D BETTER BE GOOD, I THOUGHT.
As for my friends in Dain Bramage, well . . . they were pissed. I left them in a shitty spot, and primitive voodoo dolls adorned with my face may have been impaled over stacks of burning Scream records for years to come, but I am happy to say that to this day we are all still friends, and we try to see each other whenever possible. Our lone LP, I Scream Not Coming Down, was recorded during a biblical electrical storm over Crofton, Maryland, in July 1986 and is a temper tantrum of spasmodic rhythm and beautiful melody. I will be proud of this album forever, not only because it was my first, but because of its wonderfully unique qualities. There was no one like us.
With my life completely upended, I took a job at a local furniture warehouse prepping trucks full of gaudy entertainment centers and recliners for delivery and began rehearsing with Scream on a regular basis. We spent months honing our sound and writing new material before finally debuting the new lineup July 25, 1987, at a benefit show for Amnesty International at Johns Hopkins, which was to be followed by a silent candlelight march past several international embassies to draw attention to human rights abuses worldwide. This was the most nervous I had ever been to perform, not only because of the size of the audience (anything over twelve people was considered stadium rock to me) but because the room was filled with all of my local heroes. Members of Minor Threat, Fugazi, and Rites of Spring all looked on to see if I had what it took to fill the giant shoes of the great Kent Stax, and I felt that it was my personal responsibility to do the band proud. After all, Scream were their heroes, too.
Sights were set on a fall tour of America, which was to begin in October. Scream had made this six-thousand-mile lap around the country multiple times before, but this was to be my first, something I had dreamed about ever since I picked up my first instrument. The idea of traveling town to town with no other responsibility than to rock you night after night almost seemed too good to be true.
The proposed itinerary read like the back of an old Grand Funk Railroad concert T-shirt, with a quick twenty-three shows in a little over a month taking us up the Eastern Seaboard, across the Midwest, over the Rockies to the West Coast, and back home through the South. The farthest I had been from home at that point was Chicago, on one of our epic family road trips, so to see cities like Kansas City, Des Moines, San Francisco, Austin, Tacoma, and Los Angeles on the schedule absolutely blew my fucking mind. I was not only over the moon, I felt like I was traveling to it in a Dodge van.
The van.
Historically, vans have always been the preferred and most economical mode of travel for young, independent bands that need to get from point A to point B with little to no money. From the Beatles to Bad Brains, all bands start here, or at least they should. Not only does the van serve as your equipment truck, carefully packed to fit an entire backline of gear inside (multiple amplifiers, guitars, and drums), but it also becomes your home away from home. A place to sleep when there is no hotel room (there never is), a place to warm up when there is no backstage, and a place to establish lifelong bonds with your bandmates on those epic, cramped trips across the country. It’s not for everyone, I can tell you that. It takes a certain type of person with a certain type of disposition to survive months in what seems like a miniature submarine with wheels, but if you can take it, it becomes a formative experience that you will forever rely on for life perspective.
With five people in our band (plus one roadie, none other than my lifelong friend Jimmy Swanson), we had to methodically manage the space in our van down to the last square inch. Scream were veterans of this DIY science, so designing an interior layout that would successfully fit each person and all of our equipment wasn’t impossible, it just required some serious engineering (courtesy of lead singer Pete Stahl) and multiple trips to the hardware store. The design involved building a platform from two-by-fours and plywood sheets that would act as an area to sleep on, while all the gear would fit comfortably underneath. This was not a glamorous setup by any means, but it was efficient and functional. Once we found the perfect configuration to pack the gear underneath the platform, it could never deviate from that carefully calculated puzzle, otherwise the shit wouldn’t fit. Even though that tour was over thirty years ago, I can still vividly remember how to load that old bucket of rust with the speed and efficiency of a fire station on call.
When the day finally came to embark on our cross-country journey, the van sat parked in the driveway of the old Bailey’s Crossroads house where we’d rehearsed for months, and one by one each member showed up with his duffel bag and sleeping bag in tow, ready to shove off. I was the youngest member of the band by almost ten years, and this was to be my first tour, so to say that I was green would be generous at best. “Hey!” Harley barked at me from the front seat as we were climbing into the van. “Don’t be asking me to pass you stuff from the back every ten seconds, you hear me?” Ken Kesey’s Further was quickly turning into the river patrol boat from Apocalypse Now, and we hadn’t even backed out of the goddamned driveway yet. Fuck.
I had finally let it slip in an interview a few months before that I wasn’t actually twenty-one, I was only eighteen, forgetting that I’d lied about my age on that first call with Franz. The others had looked at me in shock, but at that point we were such a well-oiled rock and roll machine from all of those sweaty rehearsals in that tiny basement, it made no difference. There was no turning back. The only problem my lie posed was that I wasn’t legally allowed inside some of the bars that we were booked to play in, so we kept our mouths shut, and if anyone ever found out, I would sit in the van patiently waiting to play, jump onstage when it was time and tear the roof off the joint, then scurry back to the van immediately after the show, soaked in sweat.
Like a row of smelly sardines in a can, we would lie across that squeaking, quaking platform in our musty sleeping bags, reading, listening to music, laughing, farting, and passing the time any way we could on those long drives. Being confined to suc
h a small space with so many people for such long periods of time actually benefits the little time you have onstage, because when you finally set up and plug in, you just want to fucking explode. Any angst, frustration, homesickness, or depression that you may feel is taken out on your instrument in a primal fit of rage for that fleeting hour of performance, and if you’re playing loud rock and roll, it doesn’t get any better.
One of the first stops on that tour was CBGB’s in New York City. Having been to New York City only once before on a family trip that my mother paid for by taking on an extra job as the JV girls’ soccer coach for four hundred dollars (it was a miracle of couponing and all-you-can-eat buffets), I was boiling with excitement to return, and to the legendary CBGB’s no less! This was punk rock ground zero, the epicenter of the soundtrack of my youth, and I would soon be standing on that stage myself, playing my heart out for the ghosts of those who had paved the way for young punks like me. The Ramones, the Cramps, Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, Bad Brains—this was hallowed ground, and it was my life’s greatest achievement that I had even made it this far.
Upon arrival, the sight of the iconic awning above the front door sent shivers down my spine. I was overcome by its beauty, weathered and decayed from years of the Bowery’s filth, just as I had seen in decades of black-and-white photographs. A crowd of punks had already gathered on the street, and we conveniently (incredulously) found a parking space directly in front of the club, spilling out of our van like Jeff Spicoli after hours of smoke and confinement. We were greeted by the infamous Harley Flanagan, bassist of New York’s most notorious band, the Cro-Mags. I was starstruck. Their album The Age of Quarrel was in my top ten punk records of all time, and here I was face-to-face with the most terrifying-looking punk rocker I had ever seen. You needed only take one look at the guy to realize he should not be fucked with. Ever. Plus, he had a pit bull on a leash that was almost as vicious as he was, so the combination of these two together made me keep my distance, until he spotted Skeeter and Pete and it instantly turned into a reunion of old friends, all smiles and handshakes and mutual respect. I was introduced and must have seemed like a schoolgirl at a Beatles concert, meeting what I would consider a “rock star.” We invited Harley into the gig, but he declined, having nowhere to put his dog, so we kindly offered to let the dog stay in our van out front as we played. Problem solved. We began to set up our gear for our afternoon slot on the bill.
As I was nervously setting up my drums in front of a full house ready for us to begin, I couldn’t for the life of me find my drum key (a most important tool to tune, tighten, or adjust any piece of drum hardware) and eventually realized that I had left it in the van. I screamed at Pete, “Dude! I need the keys to the van really quick!!” He tossed them to me from across the stage and told me that we were on in five minutes, so I elbowed through the crowd all the way to the front door in a flash and ran to the van parked out front. Fumbling with the keys as if I were disabling a time bomb, I finally slipped it into the keyhole, flipped the lock, grabbed the handle to open the door, and “RAHAHARAHHAHARAHAHAH!!!!!!!” The face of the most demonic, bloodthirsty pit bull filled the window in a murderous fit of fury that almost made me soil myself. Fuck! I thought. There was a club full of people ready for us to start any minute, and the only thing between me and that fucking drum key was a horrifying fifty-pound mass of muscle and teeth. I needed to find Harley, and I needed to find him fast. I ran back into the club, scanning the dark room for his unforgettable sneer until I spotted him and begged for his assistance. When I opened the van door with Harley by my side, I was greeted by not Satan’s hound from hell, but an adorable puppy wagging its tail in excitement to see its best friend, squealing and licking his face until I found the drum key, locked up once more, and made it to the stage in time to tear CBGB’s a new asshole. If it weren’t for Harley Flanagan, not only would there have been no show, but I probably wouldn’t have a nose or lips right now.
Next, we headed toward the Midwest for shows in Chicago and Detroit. I was no stranger to Chicago of course, but I considered Detroit somewhat exotic, uncharted territory. Of course, everybody knows its rich history of music, but many don’t realize it was America’s murder capital for the two years prior to my first visit (rivaled only by Washington, DC), so there wasn’t much sightseeing to be done unless it was from the safety of the van. Not only was this one of America’s roughest towns, but Detroit was home to some of America’s roughest bands—it’s not a coincidence that the MC5 and the Stooges were both from there. Our gig that night was with local heroes Laughing Hyenas at a bar called Paycheck’s in Hamtramck, a predominantly Polish neighborhood about five miles from the center of Detroit. A hard act to follow, the Hyenas were as abrasive and mean as their hometown would suggest but kind enough to invite us to stay at their place after the show. They lived in a group house in Ann Arbor, which was about an hour west of Detroit, so seeing as how we were heading in that direction anyway, we took them up on their most generous offer.
Heading out of town, I was on cloud nine as we stopped at a desolate, bullet-ridden gas station to fill up the tank before the drive, because that night I had met another hardcore hero of mine, Laughing Hyenas lead singer John Brannon, who was once the singer of my favorite Detroit band, Negative Approach. I was living out my punk rock dream, not only meeting the faces of my record collection but now sleeping on their fucking floors.
The party started the minute we arrived, and soon everyone was drinking (among other things) furiously while watching Super 8 films on a small screen in the living room. Exhausted from the show, I decided to pack it in early, opting to chill in the van parked out front to get a good night’s sleep somewhere quiet rather than toss and turn in this house of horrors all night long. Sleeping in the van was common practice, mind you, even if you were lucky enough to have found a house to crash in, because there was always the chance that someone would break in and steal all of your equipment, rendering you dead in the water far from home. So I volunteered to guard our livelihood with my life, headed out to the van, and passed out in the comfort of my Kmart sleeping bag.
I awoke hours later to the feeling of the van rumbling down the highway. Confused, I sat up from my sleeping bag and looked around, but everyone was gone, except for Pete, who was quietly driving, his face silhouetted with each passing streetlight. “Dude, where is everybody? Where are we going?” I croaked as I wiped the sleep from my groggy eyes. In his classic Southern drawl, Pete looked at me and said, “Do you believe in miracles?” Hours before, as we were filling up our tank to begin our journey westward, Pete had left our “float bag” (a small bag with all the cash we had to our names, around $900) on top of the gas pump back at that desolate, bullet-ridden gas station in one of the worst parts of town. Realizing that it was gone, he’d jumped in the van and doubled back to Detroit at top speed in the unlikely event that it was still there.
Miraculously, it was, and we continued on. I began to realize that at any moment, this whole thing could fall apart. That sense of suburban security I had been conditioned to aspire to was now in my rearview mirror, and the thrill and mystery of this new freedom fit me like a glove.
After a few shows, we had managed to cross the Mississippi River, the farthest I had ever been from home, and I was beginning to settle into this new life of truck stops and tollbooths quite comfortably. To really see America, you need to drive it mile by mile, because you not only begin to grasp the immensity of this beautiful country, you see the climate and geography change with every state line. THESE ARE INDEED THINGS THAT CANNOT BE LEARNED FROM AN OLD SCHOOLBOOK UNDER THE COLD CLASSROOM LIGHTS; THEY MUST BE SEEN, HEARD, AND FELT IN PERSON TO BE TRULY APPRECIATED. The education I was getting out here on the road proved to be far more valuable to me than any algebra or biology test I had ever failed, because I was discovering life firsthand, learning social and survival skills I still rely on to this day (e.g., knowing when to speak and when to shut the fuck up).
Th
ough I was finally free to follow my lifelong dream, I would still occasionally call my mother to reassure her that she had made the right decision in letting me go. Even thousands of miles apart, I was closer to her than anyone and wanted her to know that the gamble she had let me take with my life was paying off.
Kansas City, Boulder, Salt Lake City—the cities flew by as we wound our way out to the West Coast, leaving a trail of beer cans and blazed stages in our wake. Within weeks, we were driving through the cold drizzle and towering evergreens of the Pacific Northwest, headed to our gig at Tacoma’s Community World Theater, where we would play with a young band by the name of Diddly Squat. Great name, but even greater bass player, who I would meet years later to form a band of our own. Yes, Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel was a teenage punk just like me, and our paths actually crossed a few times without formal introduction, but that’s how these things tend to happen; you just have to let the universe take the wheel. Thank goodness it did.
I have to say, I didn’t find the Pacific Northwest very appealing at first, and that’s being kind. The oppressive blanket of low-lying, gray clouds that permanently blocked out the sun in the fall seemed to drain not only my energy but also my mood. Not to mention the “aroma of Tacoma,” a smell that emanated from the industrial paper mills in town, redolent with subtle notes of boiled broccoli farts and dog shit, which moved through the city depending on the direction of the shifting wind. Lovely. How anyone could permanently live somewhere so depressing was beyond me, but then again, this was a corner of the country that I knew absolutely nothing about . . . yet. One thing was for certain, though . . . the weed was getting better and better with every mile farther west.