by Dave Grohl
Finally working up the courage to venture out of my sweaty porta-cabin, I stepped to the side of the stage and witnessed what can only be described as the most awesome, most brutal, most vulgar display of power known to man, Pantera. Just as I had imagined, they were absolutely destroying the stage. Vinnie Paul, the master, the legend, beating the ever-living shit out of his thunderous mountain of drums. Phil Anselmo screaming bloody murder like a man possessed by every evil spirit from every single exorcist movie ever made. Rex Brown stalking the stage, carrying his bass like a massive flamethrower aimed at the crowd. And Dimebag Darrell . . . god’s gift to guitar, stealing the show with such ease, such swagger, such cool, leaving jaws dragging in the summer dirt. It was a Valhalla of volume. At one point, I looked behind the drums and saw a deranged, shirtless fan, breaking bottles and moshing alone, singing along to every word as if his life depended on it. THIS was a true Pantera fan. Not unlike like the 64,999 others out there in that bowl, mind you, but this dude was going totally mental literally within a few feet of the drum set. He then leaned down to the drums to fix a cymbal stand that had shifted from Vinnie Paul’s merciless bashing. How strange, I thought. Turns out this deranged, shirtless, slam-dancing fan was Vinnie’s drum tech, Kat. Let me tell you, never ever ever in my years of touring had I seen something so badass. This wasn’t a road crew. It was a gang of hoodlums. And this wasn’t a band. It was a force of fucking nature.
For a moment, I forgot that we were even on the bill that day. I was so lost in the music, I forgot that I would soon have to follow this historic performance with my version of post-grunge alternative rock (cue fingers ramming down throat). Some people meditate, some people go to church, some people lick little frogs in the desert to find this feeling. All I needed that day was Pantera. Unfortunately, that euphoric feeling immediately disappeared the second they finished and the crowd ferociously roared. We were dead meat.
I don’t remember much about our set (sometimes traumatic memories can be suppressed and pushed down to the darkest depths of your psyche, only to be unlocked by years of difficult therapy), but I do recall a few guys from the other bands watching us while we played. That, at least, made me feel a bit less like a fish out of water. I felt validated to see these heavy metal heroes singing along to our songs word for word. Thankfully we managed to make it through the gig without any bottles of piss being hurled at our faces, so I considered it an incredible success. That roaring, angry mob was not so roaring as before, but we made it back to our little room without losing any limbs. Phew.
Afterward, we had the honor of meeting and hanging out with Pantera, and anyone who’s ever had the chance to hang out with Pantera knows that it is not for the faint of heart. First of all, there was never a band more welcoming, more hospitable, more down-to-earth than Pantera. It didn’t matter who you were, what you did, where you were from, they would welcome you in, stuff a beer in your hand and a shot in your mouth, and make you laugh harder than you’d ever laughed before. We got along like a house on fire, and as we said our drunken goodbyes, Vinnie gave me a business card. “Dude, next time you’re in Dallas, you gotta come by the Clubhouse.” I looked at the card, and to my amazement (but not surprise) they had THEIR OWN STRIP CLUB. Some rock stars have expensive cars. Some have castles. Some even have exotic animals. But a fucking strip club? That takes the cake. That’s like me owning a Starbucks. Danger.
Months later, as Taylor and I looked at our old, dog-eared road atlas to prepare our trip back to Virginia, we realized that this was our big chance to witness Pantera’s wild world firsthand, so we routed the entire trip around visiting the Clubhouse. It was time. Our first day on the road we stopped at a gas station in Barstow to empty our bladders and fill up on gas. Windows down, speakers distorted from blasting classic rock at ninety miles per hour, just two best friend/drummer dudes racing down the highway without a care in the world. All sunglasses and hair, cigs hanging from big smiles, risking our lives air drumming while speeding past eighteen-wheelers blowing like sails in the desert wind. I called and left our Texan friends excited messages from my Flavor Flav–sized cell phone: “Be ready, we’re on our way.”
Walking up to the counter at a roadside motel in Phoenix, I slapped my back pocket as I would always do before pulling out my favorite green Velcro-and-vinyl wallet (Fort Knox, as it was jokingly referred to). Though, this time it didn’t make that familiar thump. My pocket was empty. My wallet was gone. Must have been in the truck. I checked the cup holders. The center console. Under the seats. The glove compartment. Nothing. Zilch. Gone. The only place we’d stopped that day was that gas station in Barstow . . . FUCK. Where else could I have left it? And that was 372.9 miles in the opposite direction! Everything I had was in that old wallet. License, credit cards, cig money, Dimebag Darrell guitar pick . . . I was entirely screwed.
Fortunately, Taylor saved the day and threw down for our room, while I phoned my accountant in Seattle and made a plan to ship some replacement cards to our next roadside motel. Alas, we soldiered on. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, was going to stop us from getting to the Clubhouse . . .
Anyone familiar with American geography knows that Dallas isn’t necessarily “on the way” to Virginia from L.A. No. It’s a proper two-hundred-mile detour if you’re planning on taking I-40 across. But the heart wants what the heart wants, so what’s an extra couple hundred miles compared to the stories we’d have to tell when I got back to my old neighborhood friends in Springfield? Stories that would make David Lee Roth’s toes curl . . . tales of mischief that would make Keith Richards cover his ears in disgust . . . hell, even Lemmy might crack a smile . . .
After dinner with some of Taylor’s relatives at an authentic Texas roadside steakhouse, we were cleared for takeoff. We jumped in the Tahoe and drove the short distance outside of town to the Clubhouse. Actually, we may have floated there on a rainbow wave of cotton candy unicorn glitter, but maybe that’s just my romantic revisionism kicking in (it does that sometimes). Regardless, it was really happening. Months and months of waking every day, counting the minutes until we walked into the neon/black light of Pantera’s palace, enveloped by the aroma of Coors Light and peach body wash, DJ blasting old-school Scorpions, to find a booth full of Pantera just waiting to greet us with a big, Pearl Jam–style high five. I had the whole thing dialed into my mind. It was the Goodfellas kitchen scene on acid. And it was about to go down.
“ID, please.”
The doorman stood there with his glow-in-the-dark hand stamp ready to go, waiting for me to do that old familiar slap on the back pocket everyone does before whipping out their own trusty Fort Knox. I looked at Taylor, eyes wide in shock. He returned my panicked expression. All the blood rushed from my face, tears welled up in my eyes, and I began to tremble with fear. I stuttered the only words I could muster, “B-B-B-B-B-B-Barstow . . . I lost my wallet in Barstow, sir.” Silence. Then, the words I most dreaded, more than the grim reaper himself, spilled from the doorman’s sneer: “Sorry, bud. Can’t let you in without ID.” Taylor jumped in and pleaded, “But, but, but . . . we’re friends with Pantera!” The man looked up with his cold, dead eyes and growled, “Everyone’s friends with Pantera. Sorry.”
And . . . that was that. Three days, fourteen hundred miles, and a dream, stomped out like a dirty old Parliament Light in the parking lot of an industrial complex outside of Dallas. No candy coating here; it fucking crushed my soul. A few more unanswered calls from the Flavor Flav phone, a few more cigs in the parking lot, and we slowly climbed back into the Tahoe, heads down, hearts broken, totally dejected. No hanging out with our besties Pantera. I knew Taylor would never let me live this down.
THEN AGAIN, I WAS ON MY WAY HOME.
Ten years later in Oxnard, California, I was at a local surf shop in the harbor buying some sunglasses with my baby daughter Violet, and as we walked up to the cash register, the nice girl behind the counter greeted me with a hello and began to ring up my purchase. She looked up, paused a moment, squinted, and asked, �
�Are you Dave Grohl?” “Yes,” I said with a smile. Still squinting, she said, “Did you lose your wallet in Barstow in 1998?”
No. Fucking. Way.
“YES!!!!!!!!!!” I replied in amazement. She laughed and said, “That was my parents’ gas station. They still have your fucking wallet, dude.”
I stopped trying to understand fate and destiny a long time ago, but dumb luck seems to be my specialty. Astonishingly, my wallet was returned to me not long after that, completely intact, and just like a time capsule buried for years, it was still filled with sweet memorabilia from that glorious period in my life, when I was young, free, and ready to start again.
And yes, even my old driver’s license was inside.
When we arrived in Virginia a week later, ears ringing from days of classic rock and in great need of long showers, I walked into my new house and immediately felt at home, only blocks from my father’s old apartment that I would walk to every Tuesday and Thursday after Catholic school, and just a short drive from my mother’s. This was a return to the place that made me who I am, and unlike Seattle or Los Angeles, I felt like I belonged. No longer a drifter crashing on a stranger’s couch or a temporary visitor, I had returned to my forever home. It was almost as if I had never left, even more so because I was now sharing the house with my oldest friend, Jimmy Swanson.
Jimmy and I had been inseparable since sixth grade. Like Siamese twins, we walked through life beside each other, every formative experience mirrored in a parallel trajectory. Like brothers, we discovered everything together, and not a day would go by without our seeing each other. Jimmy was a year older than me, tall with a Scandinavian build, his blue eyes hidden behind his perfectly feathered dirty blond hair, which was always kept in check by a plastic comb he had permanently stuffed in his back pocket. A total rocker. A lifelong rebel. He was a picture of heavy metal parking-lot cool, but without a hint of irony. He was the real fucking deal. Wherever Jimmy led, I followed, because deep down I wanted to be just like him. He and I were never cut out to be valedictorian homecoming kings, so we created our own little world as outcasts, huddled in front of the boom box in his bedroom, discovering metal, punk rock, and weed together, becoming so close that we barely needed words to communicate, we could just rely on our own ESP. This was most important because Jimmy had a very heavy stutter, something that affected him socially throughout his life, so he kept within a very tight circle of friends. Always very kind, always very polite, he was a knight in weathered denim, and he was as much my home as the home I grew up in. So, since we had shared everything together our entire lives, it only made sense that I would share this new house with him, as well. Though we had never lost our connection (Jimmy had toured with both Nirvana and Foo Fighters over the years), it had been ages since we could say, “Hey, man, I’ll be over in five minutes . . . ,” and spend the day together in our little world, so returning to him felt like a return to myself, a much needed reunion.
Having had absolutely no experience in building a recording studio, I began to research equipment, design, and materials, and reached out to a few of my brilliant engineer and producer friends for advice on how to turn my crummy little basement into the next Abbey Road. One of them was Adam Kasper, a killer producer and friend from Seattle with whom I had worked before, most notably on Nirvana’s final session in January 1994. Along with a wicked sense of humor, Adam had a very easygoing, analog style of recording, so he seemed the perfect person to not only help assemble a simple basement studio but produce our next record as well. The making of The Colour and the Shape, which had been produced by Gil Norton, the man responsible for the Pixies’ classic hits, was a long, arduous, hyper-technical affair that took its toll on the band over those difficult months in the woods outside of Seattle. Gil was a notorious taskmaster, and his meticulous attention to detail ultimately paid off, but not before breaking our spirit after thirty to forty takes of each song. We swore we would never put ourselves through that painful process again, so the idea of moving back to Virginia and building a simple little studio with Adam Kasper in a house sounded much more appealing. One twenty-four-track machine, one vintage mixing console, a few microphones, and a few compressors were all we needed, and we began to hunt down the gear as we converted my basement into a soundproofed chamber of rock.
My mother would often come by to visit and inspect the progress, and I would take her on a tour from room to room, doing my best to explain the science behind the precise acoustic design required to make a studio (something I knew absolutely nothing about, but since I’m a seasoned bullshit artist, she bought it hook, line, and sinker). Mostly, after years away, I think Mom was just happy to be able to stop by and see me whenever she wanted.
On one of her weekly inspections, we heard the sound of a tiny kitten coming from somewhere in the piles of rubble scattered throughout the room, quietly meowing tiny cries for rescue. Startled, we began frantically searching every corner of the studio to find it, but it seemed to be moving. “It’s over here!” I said, and my mother ran to my side of the studio. Silence. “No, it’s over here!” my mother replied, and I ran to her side of the room. Silence again. Back and forth we went as the minutes passed, perplexed by the kitten’s ability to throw its little voice in every direction. We stood perfectly still, doing our best to not scare it away. I quietly whispered to my mom, “Maybe it’s inside a wall,” and proceeded to get on my knees and slowly crawl across the dirty floor, putting my ear to the freshly painted drywall, hoping to locate this helpless animal. My mother slowly walked up beside me and I heard a faint meow. “Shhhh!” I said. She took one step closer. Meow. It was closer, I thought. Standing just beside me, my mother leaned in to listen, and . . . meow. I looked down at my mother’s sandals and said, “Hey, Mom . . . will you shift your weight on your right foot for a second?”
Meow.
The kitten that we had been chasing all over the studio for the past forty-five minutes happened to be my mother’s right sandal, “meowing” every time she took a step. We both fell on the floor in fits of laughter, barely able to breathe, thankful that no one else was there to witness the two of us in this most ridiculous moment, one we still laugh about to this day.
With the completion of the studio came spring, my favorite of all Virginia seasons. After months of cold, dead leaves, and barren trees, the sun arrived and nature was soon in full bloom, a rebirth that somewhat poetically coincided with our newfound independence as a band, and we opened all the windows to welcome the new chapter in. What I once imagined as a state-of-the-art recording facility turned out to be a very bare-bones, no-frills arrangement, with packing foam, pillows, and sleeping bags haphazardly nailed to the walls for sound treatment. This was the definition of DIY to me, an ethos that I had learned and had always tried to follow since my days in the Washington, DC, punk rock scene, where we all did everything ourselves, from booking shows to starting our own record labels to releasing our simple recordings on vinyl. I found that the reward was always much sweeter when you did things yourself. And here we were, years later, figuring it out as we went along, step by step, in the most unsophisticated and blissfully naive fashion, but most important, we were hidden away from any expectation of the industry, left to our own devices to discover who we really were as a band.
Our daily routine was simple. Since the band had moved into the house with Jimmy and me, my day would always begin with a little housekeeping: emptying overflowing ashtrays; disposing of warm, half-empty Coors Light cans; and mopping the hardwood floors like a haggard maid from hell in dirty sweatpants. One by one, each member would appear and stare at the coffeepot like a crackhead waiting for the pipe as it slowly brewed. Taylor would complain about the “ducks” outside his window (crows) and we would slowly wake, planning the day at the kitchen table. Maybe a few rounds of hoops in the driveway before lunch, and then we would head down into the basement for a review of last night’s recordings. We would work all day, finish with a few beers and a barbecue out b
ack as the fireflies danced around the grill, and pass out in the living room watching TV with Jimmy as he took bong hit after bong hit from his favorite chair. This was our routine, day after day, and it was exactly this relaxed nature that made these recordings the most natural-sounding album of our entire catalog. Coupled with the restrictions imposed on us by the minimal technical capability of the studio, it made for a simple, raw, and honest recording. Not to mention, I was obsessed with AM Gold music at the time (soft rock hits from the seventies), perhaps revisiting that magical era because it reminded me of growing up listening to the radio as I drove the same streets that I had returned to. Andrew Gold, Gerry Rafferty, Peter Frampton, Helen Reddy, Phoebe Snow—those rich, melancholy melodies were making their way into our new songs. Popular rock music at the time had turned its focus to a new genre, nu metal, which I appreciated but wanted to be the antithesis of, so I intentionally moved in the opposite direction. There was a glaring absence of melody in most nu metal songs, and it was my love of melody (inspired by the Beatles from an early age) that led me to write from a much gentler place. That, coupled with the overwhelming feeling of rebirth that the Virginia spring ushered in, gave way to songs like “Ain’t It the Life,” “Learn to Fly,” “Aurora,” and “Generator,” all great examples of a man finally comfortable in his surroundings, no longer wandering but somewhere he belonged. By the end of our sessions in June, we had made what I still to this day consider to be our best album, the aptly titled There Is Nothing Left to Lose.
And our new studio, which would serve us well for years to come, was now given a name: Studio 606.
As I stood at the Grammys podium to accept the Best Rock Album award a year and a half later, I looked out at the audience of musicians and industry players, all dripping in diamonds and dressed in the latest fashion, and felt a huge sense of pride that we had created this all on our own, away from the glitter and shiny lights of Hollywood, making the reward for our very first Grammy even sweeter. If ever there was a time when I felt that we had actually earned a trophy, it was then. From our little ramshackle basement studio nestled in the trees I once climbed as a child, we had not only captured the sound of rebirth and renewal brought upon us by the majestic Virginia spring, but we had found a return to who we once were. After years of pushing through adversity after adversity, death, divorce, and a revolving door of band members, I had persevered and come out the other end stronger, not yet ready to buy the farm. There was still more work to be done. And with this new trophy that represented our revival of spirit, one thing was clear: