The Storyteller

by Dave Grohl

  The show was great. We rocked both songs with groove and intensity, and in the short week and a half that we had known each other, I was starting to feel surprisingly comfortable within the band’s laid-back dynamic, something that I had never even gotten close to feeling in the three and a half years I was in Nirvana. The awkward dysfunction of Nirvana definitely made for quite a noise, but the sense of family and community in the Heartbreakers’ camp seemed so much healthier and less chaotic. This was exactly what I needed to soothe my past traumas, and a great reminder that music does represent joy and life and celebration. This was a perfect one-off to get me back on my feet, I thought.

  And then Tom asked if I would consider doing it again.

  Now, this was a game changer. An unexpected turn of fate that made the experience both more rewarding and ultimately confusing. How on earth could I say no to such an opportunity? Never in my wildest dreams had I thought I was worthy or capable of such an offer, but goddamn, it felt good to be asked. As we stood in the narrow hallway outside of the tiny dressing room after our performance, he asked me to think about it, and I thanked him profusely, still blown away that I was even speaking with the man who wrote the classic “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” a song about following life’s crooked path with all of its twists and turns, never knowing where it may take you.

  I returned home and picked up my box of one hundred cassettes, neatly stuffed in a cardboard box that I proceeded to load into my truck as if I were bringing a newborn home from the hospital for the first time. Had I left my heart in New York City with Tom Petty? Or was it somewhere in that cardboard box full of fresh cassettes?

  I WAS AT A CROSSROADS.

  The feeling that I experienced with the Heartbreakers was so rewarding, so comforting, so needed at that moment, but deep down I knew that I would never really be a Heartbreaker. They were connected by decades of history, and as lovely and welcoming and hospitable as they were, I would forever be “that guy from Nirvana,” something I was obviously honored to be, but with that title came some extremely heavy baggage.

  I loved Tom’s music so much, and I would have had the time of my life playing his songs night after night, but . . . they weren’t mine. We spoke on the phone one more time, and Tom explained that they toured very comfortably. I would have my own bus, and the schedules were super relaxed, not the grueling van runs that I was used to doing. It all sounded so perfect. Almost too perfect. I was twenty-five years old and still hungry, not ready to relax into a “sure thing.” I still had the restless energy of a teenager, driven to thrive in the unknown even if it was frightening at times.

  So, I politely declined and decided that the cardboard box in the back of my truck was my key to a new life. It was definitely not a sure thing, but nothing ever is.

  Yeah, I’m runnin’ down a dream

  That never would come to me

  Workin’ on a mystery

  Goin’ wherever it leads

  Runnin’ down a dream

  RIP Tom Petty 1950–2017

  Sweet Virginia

  Courtesy of Danny Clinch

  “I’m going to need some privacy, so . . . nothing under four hundred acres,” I said confidently.

  “Wow!” my real estate agent, Connie, replied in shock. “Okay! Well, let me get on that and I’ll circle back with some listings ASAP!” I was a bit taken off guard by the surprise in her voice, to be honest. This didn’t seem like such an unreasonable request to me, considering that I was looking for a house to live in, a guesthouse for the band, and a barn to convert into a recording studio so that I could ride off into the sunset, living out my dream of being completely self-sufficient in a sleepy Virginia town.

  Then again, I had no idea how big an acre was.

  After seven years in Seattle, my life there had finally run its course. I had arrived a total stranger, lived in squalid desolation and emotional isolation, found my groove with a new group that became the biggest band in the world, had it all ripped out from under me, and started over again. A lifetime in itself. As much as I loved the city and the friends I had made there over the years, I had left my heart in Virginia, my forever home. Growing up among the rolling hills and tall oak trees of its suburbs, I never believed that I would live anywhere else, no matter how badly I wanted to break out of its quiet monotony and predictability as a kid. I’d always figured that I would end up right where I started.

  As we began recording the Foo Fighters’ second album, The Colour and the Shape (our most popular record to this day), in the fall of 1996 at a studio outside of Seattle named Bear Creek, I sensed that my time in the Pacific Northwest was coming to a close. Not only had I always felt like a visitor, just another transplant in a city fiercely protective of its precious roots, but the death rattle of my first marriage was in its final throes, casting a shadow over our recording sessions in the deep woods as the darkest winter months lay ahead (themes that are evident throughout the lyrics of that album). The fire that Seattle had built in my heart was going out, and no matter how hard I fanned the embers, I could never reignite what once was. It’s time to move on, I thought. I don’t belong here anymore.

  Or, as Pat Smear once said, “Too many ghosts.”

  But, before moving back east to the place I felt most at home, I decided to make a twelve-month pit stop in Los Angeles (my version of The Lost Weekend), getting a feel for my newfound emancipation just blocks away from that sinking ship full of mud wrestlers I had once managed to barely escape. No longer surviving on dollar-bill handouts and cans of baked beans, I could now afford the luxury of my own place (and food). I rented a comfortable little two-bedroom house just down the street from the Sunset Strip, which I proceeded to take advantage of with reckless abandon, no longer tied to anywhere or anyone. The Foo Fighters had now become more than an off-the-cuff side project, we had become a band, although the making of our second album left us on shaky ground (original drummer William Goldsmith quit after I rerecorded his drum tracks, but was thankfully replaced by the overly qualified Taylor Hawkins, and Pat Smear temporarily left soon after). After making it through the challenges of recording our second album, I needed to blow off some steam.

  I felt liberated in a way that made me want to indulge in all the things I had been holding back from all those years. And hold back, I did not. After years of swilling pitchers of heavy Hefeweizen and the sophisticated microbrews of the Pacific Northwest, I was introduced to the much less pretentious and far more lethal combination of Coors Light and tequila by my new partner in crime, Taylor Hawkins. Any timidity that I’d once had when it came to letting my hair down was now gone, left in a wake of Patrón bottles and chewed-up lime wedges. At the time, former Scream vocalist Pete Stahl had taken a job working at the Viper Room, a hedonistic den of vice conveniently located down the street from my house. This became my nightly haunt, usually ending with a bungalow full of derelicts after last call, drinking until the sun came up. That year was, to say the least, a good time. But after twelve months of gluttonous debauchery, I realized that this was not the sunset I was meant to ride off into. I set my sights on another, more wholesome horizon: the paradise of rural Virginia.

  I flew back east to meet Connie, and we began our house hunt in the quaint little town of Leesburg, only an hour from the cosmopolitan buzz of Washington, DC, and built in 1740, with beautiful historic buildings on every corner and stone walls lining miles of winding horse country. This was a return to my youth, as I had spent many summers walking these fields when I was a boy, looking for Civil War bullets while dove hunting in the sweltering heat, and winters placing goose decoys in the hardened, icy mud before sunrise, waiting for the flocks to arrive from a pit dug into the cold earth, hoping to bring home dinner. Those memories washed over me as we drove to our first listing, but as we arrived, Connie offered one disclaimer: “Now, this first property is a bit smaller than what you were looking for, but the house itself is gorgeous, and it has the guesthouse and barn you were looking for.” A bit di
sappointed, I asked, “How much smaller?” “It’s about one hundred acres,” she replied. One hundred acres? That’s nothing! I thought. How could I possibly disappear and play music into the wee hours with my band on only a hundred acres? “Well . . . ,” I said, “we’re here. I guess we should at least go check it out . . .”

  As I stood on the front porch of this immaculate, two-hundred-year-old mansion that was once a foxhunting lodge, I was dwarfed by the huge columns that towered overhead, and as I looked out at the expanse of lush green fields below, I realized why my real estate agent was in shock on that first call. A hundred acres was a goddamned farm. And four hundred acres? That was an entire fucking county. A surveyor, I was not, and I was mortified by my agricultural ignorance, but also humbled by the awe-inspiring beauty of the property that stretched before me, its perimeter lined with trees as a natural border, running down to a small river in the distance. Holy fuck! I thought. What have I gotten myself into?

  Courtesy of Danny Clinch

  After walking through the main residence (which was a bit too similar to the White House, somewhere I know I’ll never live), we headed over to the guesthouse, where it suddenly dawned on me that this was all wrong. Here I was, just thirty years old, about to literally “buy the farm,” as they say, as if I were done with my blessed life of music and adventure, ready to ride off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again. Not to mention, the fucking guesthouse was twice the size of the tiny home I grew up in just an hour away, a house that my mother, sister, and I were more than comfortable sharing our entire lives. The barn was tempting, though. I could totally imagine its becoming a world-class recording facility, with its high ceilings and its immense square footage, more than enough room to fit an entire orchestra. But I wasn’t ready to get so comfortable just yet. THERE WAS STILL MORE WORK TO BE DONE.

  Connie drove me to a few more listings, all in the two-hundred-fifty-to-four-hundred-acre range. (“Wanna walk the property line?” she would ask. Um, no thanks), but it was no use; my mind was made up. This pipe dream would have to wait. Maybe someday when life slowed down, and I had a beautiful family to share it with, I would embrace this domestic, rural Americana thing. But not yet.

  I eventually settled for a more reasonable house on one and a half acres outside of historic Old Town Alexandria, only miles from my old neighborhood, and began construction on what would become the basement recording studio where the Foo Fighters would work for years to come. We had recently been freed from our contract with Capitol Records on account of a “key man clause” that stated if Capitol Records president Gary Gersh (an old friend who was also the man who’d signed Nirvana to Geffen years before) were to leave, we had the option to go as well, a provision that was written and accepted because of our long history together. His departure was an unprecedented stroke of luck, and we opted to follow him, now making us completely independent, something that most bands never have the luxury of experiencing after being locked into a deal for multiple albums.

  The beauty of this was that we weren’t obligated to be a band anymore. We didn’t have to do it, we wanted to do it, proving our intention to be pure. It had been a rough few years since our first album, touring relentlessly, trying to find our legs, pushing through the sophomore slump, and losing a few members along the way, but we always persevered out of our genuine love of playing together. The only time I ever seriously considered giving up was the time Nate quit for twenty-four hours in the spring of 1998. While I was at home at my mother’s house in Virginia, Nate called to inform me that his heart wasn’t in it anymore and that he felt more at home with his former band Sunny Day Real Estate, which was planning a reunion. This one got me. William was never really cut out for the band’s intensity and drive, Pat was just “over it” when he left, Franz was a dear old friend but it never really clicked, but Nate? The guy I had put this whole thing together with? I’d finally had it and angrily replied, “Okay, well I’m sick of teaching people these fucking songs, so when I find a guy YOU have to teach them.” We said goodbye, but deep down I knew that without Nate, the Foo Fighters was over. I couldn’t handle one more resignation, and it was beginning to feel suspiciously like the solo project I never wanted it to be.

  That night I went out drinking at my favorite low-rent barbecue joint, Ribsters, with my best friend Jimmy and proceeded to get blackout drunk, crying in my Jack and Cokes, defeated by another blow to my life’s greatest passion. Returning home, I passed out in my childhood bedroom, head spinning like a top, and was awakened the next morning by the sound of my mother’s voice whispering gently outside my door, “David? Nate is on the phone . . .” Confused, I grabbed the giant cordless phone, extended the long antenna, and growled, “Helloooo . . .” Nate proceeded to apologize, explained that he’d had a momentary lapse of reason and that he didn’t want to quit the band after all. To say that I was relieved is a gross understatement; I was practically born again. We cried, said “I love you, man” to each other, and hung up the phone, and then I crawled back into bed, realizing that I had pissed it the night before.

  As my new house was being prepared, Taylor and I plotted a cross-country trek from Los Angeles to Virginia, just two young men in a black Chevy Tahoe listening to classic rock at dangerous volumes, speeding down the highway on a crazy coast-to-coast odyssey. Taylor and I had become practically inseparable since he had joined the band the year before, becoming devious partners in crime from day one. During his stint as Alanis Morissette’s drummer, long before he became a Foo Fighter, we would bump into each other backstage at festivals all over the world, and our chemistry was so obvious that even Alanis herself once asked him, “What are you going to do when Dave asks you to be his drummer?” Part Beavis and Butthead, part Dumb and Dumber, we were a hyperactive blur of Parliament Lights and air drumming wherever we went, so there was no one I would rather have shared this psychopathic safari with than Taylor. We mapped out the trip to make a few stops along the way, visiting Taylor’s grandmother and Pantera’s strip club (the latter being top priority), but for the most part it was a straight 2,600-mile shot back to my hometown. (Upon arrival, Taylor broke into his best Bruce Springsteen impression, serenading me with the Boss’s classic anthem of the same name. The only thing funnier was the time he played the theme from Cheers on a piano in the middle of a crowded Costco.) I hosted one last going-away party in my little canyon bungalow, packed up my meager belongings into a stack of U-Haul boxes, threw everything on a moving truck, and said goodbye once again to the excess and desperation of America’s most glamorous city. As Taylor and I began our journey, I was more than happy to see Los Angeles disappear in my rearview mirror, leaving another chapter behind, one that still remains a bit blurrier than the rest.

  We had met the almighty Pantera (the undisputed kings of metal) earlier that year at an Ozzfest concert in the UK where we were asked to fill in for Korn at the last minute, a most terrifying request. Don’t get me wrong, I was a lifelong, card-carrying, diehard metal fan. A back-patch-wearing, cassette-collecting, fanzine-subscribing, stage-diving lifer at heart. But Ozzfest? The Foo Fighters? We were the rock and roll equivalent of Revenge of the Nerds compared to the bludgeoning metal of all the other acts. Some of us even had hair ABOVE our collars at the time, so this made little sense to me. This was perhaps the greatest mismatch of all time. Disaster waiting to happen . . .

  To make matters worse, we were booked to go on after Pantera. The absolute heaviest, tightest, grooviest, most badass metal band of all time. The kings of Cro-Magnon carnage. The motherfucking COWBOYS FROM HELL. “There’ll be nothing left once they play their final chord, believe me,” I told my manager. Stage, gone. Minds and PA blown. Nothing but a muddy field of shattered eardrums and melted brains. But, never being one to say no to a bad idea, we agreed, and set our sights on Milton Keynes.

  The National Bowl in Milton Keynes is no stranger to rock and roll spectacles. From Michael Jackson to Metallica, Queen to Green Day, Status Quo to the P
rodigy, the venue had hosted decades of massive shows within its natural surroundings (apparently a former clay pit for brick making). With a capacity of sixty-five thousand, and only fifty miles northwest of London, it was the ideal place for a glorious, sunny Saturday of doom. And the lineup was ridiculously strong. Sabbath, Slayer, Soulfly, and . . . ahem . . . us. The day was primed to be a mammoth metal showdown of gigantic proportions.

  Pulling into the backstage area, I peered out of the tour bus window to see if I could catch a glimpse of some of my heroes. Tom Araya! Scott Ian! Tony Iommi! Max Cavalera! There they were, wandering about like us mere mortals. And in the light of day, no less! I had always imagined (hoped) that these dark figures only came out at night after hanging upside down like bats in their mausoleums, nocturnal creatures refusing the sun, just waiting to terrorize us all with their evil anthems beneath a full moon. To my dismay, I think I saw a few of them in shorts holding soda pops, but whatever. Metal lives.

  I hid in our dressing room, for fear that I would get eaten alive. Plus, I couldn’t bear to walk to the stage and take a frightened glimpse of the certain fate that awaited us in that undulating mosh pit of leather and spikes. I sat there nervously, trying to concoct a set list that was a little more Motörhead, a little less 10cc, scouring our back catalog for anything without the word “love” or a George Harrison–style slide guitar solo. More than wanting to impress the audience, I wanted to impress my hard rock heroes, hoping that they would recognize that I too was a metalhead in my heart.