by Dave Grohl
After the show, I retreated back to the dressing room and looked at the schedule of performers that was taped to the wall. I noticed that one of my favorite bands, the Hellacopters, from Sweden, were playing on a side stage in the distance, so I grabbed a few beers, I threw Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream on the back of my now-famous scooter, and we putted over in the dark to see them play. A hard rock barrage of classic riffs and classic hair, the Hellacopters never failed to put on a great show, and I was fortunate enough to see more than a few, having toured extensively with them over the years.
While I sat on the side of the stage headbanging and sipping my beers, I noticed that it had started to rain. Not a torrential tropical downpour, but enough to make me think that it was time to drive back to the hotel before it really started coming down. These scooters weren’t necessarily roadworthy, and even a light drizzle could turn the highway into a slick would-be disaster, but it was just a few miles away, so I didn’t think much of it. I gathered Taylor for the ride back to our DeLorean-themed castle in the sand and put on my hoodie, and we set off.
Within a mile or so, traffic had come to a complete halt on the busy two-lane highway. It was late, and there was basically only one road for all of the other 49,999 folks who had been to the concert to get back into town, so our quick trip home had become a virtual heavy metal parking lot. There must be an accident, I thought, and we moved at a snail’s pace for what seemed like an eternity. And then I saw what was really slowing traffic.
A sobriety checkpoint.
Now, I must stop here to try to rationalize why I didn’t just jump off that stupid fucking scooter, park it on the side of the road, and call Gus to come pick me up in the rain. First . . . it was a goddamned scooter. This thing was about as much of a motor vehicle as a riding lawn mower. I couldn’t imagine that a policeman would even think twice about waving me past, most likely snickering at how silly I looked trying to keep up with traffic in my rain-soaked hoodie and camouflage shorts. Second, I truly didn’t feel the least bit impaired from the drinking I had done over the course of the last five hours. Not to toot my own horn, but it takes more than a few tins of malted beverages and a few shots of whiskey to put me down. I honestly didn’t feel the least bit drunk. So, I was in the clear, right?
Wrong.
“Blow in this, mate,” the policeman said as I pulled up to the checkpoint. Shocked, I happily obliged as I saw Taylor whiz past, free as a bird (apparently he had abstained from alcohol that night, preferring to indulge in other party favors instead), blowing as hard as I could into the tiny straw at the end of the copper’s little device. He took one look at it, looked at me, and in the thickest, most Crocodile Dundee Australian accent said, “Step off the bike, you’re over the limit . . .” I couldn’t fucking believe it. All of those years getting away with doing the most jackass shit you could possibly imagine and never getting caught, and here I was being arrested in Australia for drunk driving on a fucking moped. “Pull over and take it out of gear!” he said. I had to laugh. Gears? This thing had no gears. You practically had to use your feet like Fred Flintstone to get the damn thing moving. I put it on its kickstand, and the officer asked me for my ID. Now, this was a problem. I never, ever carry my passport around while on tour, as I would lose it in a hot New York minute. (Yes, I’m that guy who loses everything in my pockets at least once an afternoon.) Gus has always held on to it for me, only letting me touch it when crossing a border or checking into a flight, and then immediately demanding I give it back. All I had was the Big Day Out tour laminate that was draped around my neck, which fortunately had my name, picture, and band affiliation on it, so I said, “Oh, man, my tour manager has my passport, but I do have this,” and I handed it over in hopes that, by some slim chance, he would be a huge fan and let me go.
MAYBE, FOR ONCE, THIS ROCK STAR NAME-DROP WOULD ACTUALLY WORK. NOPE.
“Musician, huh?” he said with a bit of newfound swagger. I explained that we were on the Big Day Out tour and that we had been here for a few days, enjoying his marvelous city, hence the ridiculous scooter. “Ah . . . ,” he said. “When’s the next show?” “Tomorrow in Sydney,” I replied with a glimmer of hope. “Sorry, mate, you’re gonna miss that one. I have to take you to jail.” Panic set in. I explained that I could practically see the hotel from where we were standing, and that I could very well just park this piece of shit and walk the rest of the way. “Sorry, mate” was all I got in return. I was indeed fucked.
Courtesy of Danny Clinch
Just then, Taylor, who had successfully made his way through the checkpoint and doubled back to make sure that I was okay, pulled up to us and said, “Dude, what’s going on???” I explained that I was on my way to jail, and that he should race back to the hotel and get Gus to prepare my bail. Taylor sped off (“sped” being a generous term) and I was left standing there alone as row after row of cars passed with people from the show sticking their heads out the window, screaming, “Fuck yeah, Dave! Good on ya, mate! Nice show!” I could only smile and wave. What a dunce.
I was soon handcuffed, placed in the back of the police car, and driven to a mobile police station across the street, where I was interrogated by detectives as if I were Ted Bundy. “What’s your home address? What’s your mother’s home address? What’s your mother’s work address?” It went on for ages, and if I did indeed have any buzz going, it was wearing off quickly with the tedious and totally irrelevant questioning that I was being subjected to. Just throw me in the goddamned cell, I thought after what felt like hours. And that they did.
Once I arrived at the jail, I was again cheered on by all of the other criminals from the show as I was formally booked at the front desk and placed in a cell with a passed-out punter in a Primus T-shirt who snored so loudly, I thought I might have to hang myself with my shoelaces. I retreated to my concrete slab of a bed and did my best to drape the stiff complimentary canvas blanket they had given me around my body, shivering from the cold wet clothes I had been wearing all night in the rain. Since the cell door was plexiglass, the room fell completely silent once it was closed, like an acoustically treated vocal booth in a recording studio, so I just lay there listening to my ears ring from the triumphant show I had performed just hours before, wondering how on earth my weekend in paradise had come to this.
Within a few hours, my hero and savior Gus arrived, and as he looked up at the security monitors full of prisoners, he pointed at my shivering figure on the screen and announced to the officers, “That one is mine.” I was sprung, and the ride back to our hotel was a chorus of laughter as I soberly recounted all of the juvenile events that had brought me to this incredibly absurd fate. We got in a few hours’ sleep and flew down to Sydney the next morning for a show that night.
But my life of crime wasn’t behind me. I was required by law to return to the Gold Coast for my court date a week later. If convicted, I would not only have to pay a fine but could quite possibly face actual jail time, not to mention fuck up my chances of ever being allowed in their beautiful country again, which was the most heartbreaking prospect as Australia had become my favorite place to tour over the years. If I lost that opportunity to a few beers and a cheap scooter, I would never be able to forgive myself, and neither would my band. I began to take this all very seriously, so seriously that Gus and I went to a department store and blew $700 on a suit so that I wouldn’t look like a complete dirtbag when face-to-face with the law. Nothing is as pathetic as two grown men strolling through racks and racks of clothes in a department store, making fashion decisions based on the objectivity of a stuffy judge, saying things like “Too conservative?” and “Too disco?” We decided on something dapper but not too rakish, and prepared for our trip back north. The next day, as we were leaving the hotel in Melbourne to fly back up to Queensland, I bumped into the guitarist of Primal Scream in the lobby, who quipped, “What do you call a Foo Fighter in a suit? GUILTY!!!” This did not help.
We met my lawyer, or “barrister” a
s they call them, at a Burger King down the road from the court building and discussed my defense over some greasy cheeseburgers and stale fries. There wasn’t much to say, really. I blew over the limit on a motor vehicle. Case closed. There were no dubious technicalities that I could fall back on to nullify my charge, so it was basically up to the judge to decide the severity of my punishment (and the wisdom of suit choice). I fixed my cheap tie and we headed over to the gallows for judgment day. This shit was getting real.
Before we even set foot in the building, I was ambushed by a local news crew, microphone prodding my face as I walked and delivered “No comment” from behind my new sunglasses. I must say, if there’s any good that came from this whole experience, it’s that I now know what it feels like to be Johnnie Cochran. Thank god it’s only happened once (and thank god I’m not Johnnie Cochran). At least I look good in this suit, I thought. We stepped inside and crossed our fingers for an unlikely “not guilty” verdict.
The judge threw the book at me. I thankfully managed to escape any jail time or community service, but technically it was a conviction, so I paid my fine (less than the suit!) and am now forever considered a criminal in Australia, which means still to this day, when entering their country, I have to check the little box that says, “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CONVICTED OF A CRIME IN AUSTRALIA?” And every time I hand an immigration officer my form, they flip a small switch under their desk that illuminates a red light, signaling their supervisor to come assist them. And every time I explain my crime to said supervisor, they laugh and say, “Oh, right! I remember that!”
I GOT OFF EASY, I SUPPOSE. MY REAL SENTENCE? A LIFETIME OF RIDICULE.
If only I had harnessed my psychic ability that night on the rainy highway, shivering in my hoodie as I inched toward the sobriety checkpoint, I wouldn’t have to answer for this embarrassing crime for years to come. Mine is a small price to pay. . . . But ever since that meeting with the psychic in Sydney, I sometimes look down to find the powerful blue aura that apparently radiates from my callused hands and wonder if it will ever help me out. Though, with all of my supposed superpowers, I will still always choose to let life take its natural course, a journey with no road map to refer to in the event that you get lost.
Life Was Picking Up Speed
“How old are you?” the doctor asked, seeming somewhat puzzled.
“I’m forty,” I nervously replied.
“And why are you here?” he inquired.
“Because I’m having chest pains and I think I’m going to fucking die!” I shot back in a panic.
As we sat in front of the CT scan monitors at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, where I had just been subjected to lying perfectly still in a claustrophobic tube for half an hour, he flipped through the blurry digital images on the screen, checking for any clogging or decay in the arteries and chambers of my strained heart. I sat beside him, wringing my sweaty hands while anxiously awaiting my fatal diagnosis as he examined the seemingly indistinguishable black-and-white pictures closely for a minute or two, and then he sat back in his chair.
“Hmmmm . . . not really seeing anything here . . . are you under any stress?”
If he only knew, I thought. I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this slow-pitch of a question, but I respectfully answered him without making it seem so blatantly obvious.
“Ummm, yeah . . . little bit,” I said with a smirk.
“Do you get much sleep?”
“Maybe three to four hours a night?” I sheepishly replied, which, to be fair, was a rather generous estimate at the time.
He took one more swing and asked, “Do you drink a lot of coffee?”
Bingo!
“Define a lot of coffee . . . ,” I said, knowing that my caffeine consumption would probably make Juan Valdez pack up his donkey and run for the hills of Colombia. I was almost embarrassed to admit the amount of coffee I would drink in one day, for fear that he would 5150 me and send me off in a straitjacket to the nearest Caffeine Anonymous meeting. I had recently come to terms with this addiction, realizing that maybe five pots of coffee a day was slightly overdoing it, but I hadn’t accepted the dire consequences until now. Unfortunately, I’m THAT guy. Give me one, I want ten. There is a reason why I still to this day have never done cocaine, because deep down I know that if I did coke the same way I drink coffee, I’d be sucking dicks at the bus stop every morning for an eight ball.
Coffee. Just writing the word makes me want some. Hot, cold, gourmet, gas station, fresh brewed, bottom of the pot, instant, French press . . . let’s just say that I’m no connoisseur, I just need the fix. I’m the furthest thing from a coffee snob (a pretentious cult that I loathe intensely), so I’ll drink anything within reach. From Dunkin’ Donuts to the world’s most expensive bean that is plucked from the dung of wild civets in Southeast Asia, I’ve had it all, and I drink it for one reason and one reason only: to get high.
But it wasn’t just the coffee that sent me to the hospital that day. Life was picking up speed.
2009 was a banner year. It began with my fortieth-birthday party, held at that bastion of class, the Medieval Times theme restaurant in Anaheim, California, a gigantic equestrian arena where you watch fake knights with fake English accents joust as you eat greasy turkey legs with your bare hands and drink Coors Light from BeDazzled chalices. Forever memorialized in Jim Carrey’s greatest movie, The Cable Guy, it is the most absurd, hilarious, downright embarrassing dining experience known to man, and apparently not somewhere a grown man would typically celebrate another trip around the sun, which I didn’t realize until the fake king’s voice came booming over the PA with a few announcements. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a few birthdays tonight! Eddie is turning seven! Tommy is turning ten! And Dave is turning . . . forty???”
Courtesy of the author’s personal archives
As with most things in my life, I revel in the absurdity of it all and take advantage of every bizarre moment, so what better place to assemble 150 of my closest friends, all seated in the “Blue Knight” section of the arena, drunkenly cheering on our noble chevalier with bloodthirsty abandon, praying for a kill. And what better moment to start a band, for this was the night that I introduced Led Zeppelin’s bassist, John Paul Jones, to my old friend Josh Homme to begin our new, top secret project, Them Crooked Vultures.
I had met Josh in the early nineties while he was playing guitar in one of my favorite bands of all time, Kyuss, and we had subsequently toured the world together over the years with his band Queens of the Stone Age, which I had even joined for a short time, recording their album Songs for the Deaf and playing some of the most incendiary shows of my entire life. Josh has “the thing,” an indefinable, unspoken, magical ability that is truly one in a million, and whenever we played together, the result was always like the hypnotic wave of a murmuration of starlings, the music effortlessly flowing from one direction to the next with grace, never losing its tight pattern. Our onstage improvisation was that of two old friends finishing each other’s sentences, often laughing hysterically behind the audience’s back at our musical inside jokes. In essence, it was a match made in heaven, and any opportunity to join forces, we would take.
We talked about a side project from time to time, usually when we were exhausted from the responsibilities and obligations of our day jobs, and when our bands crossed paths on tour. We would sit around fantasizing about something weird, loose, and fun over cartons of cigarettes and gallons of backstage cocktails. Josh was a drummer too, so he and I could easily flip back and forth, swapping instruments while trying to get as far away from the sound of Queens and the Foos as we possibly could. But beyond any musical prediction, we knew we would have a blast, and after a year and a half on the road playing “Learn to Fly” every fucking night, the promise of something fun was much needed to keep me from quitting music altogether and finally becoming the mediocre roofer I was destined to be.
Around the same time, I was asked to present a GQ Outstanding Achievemen
t Award to the members of Led Zeppelin (let the painfully obvious sentiment of that colossal understatement sink in for a moment), so I called Josh and asked if I should mention the idea of our secret project to John Paul Jones, the greatest, grooviest bassist in the history of rock and roll. “You know John Paul Jones?” he said. Turns out I did, having recorded with him once for the Foo Fighters’ album In Your Honor in 2004. He also conducted the orchestra for a Foos Grammys performance. I found him to be not only pleasant and down-to-earth, but a blinding musical genius. Plus, he had manned the boards as a producer for fringe artists like the awesome Butthole Surfers and Diamanda Galás. The guy was not afraid to get weird, to say the least, so there was hope that he might consent to our freaky scheme. If the magic that Josh and I had together was coupled with the almighty John Paul Jones, we would surely have ourselves a “supergroup” (a ridiculous term that we shunned). Josh and I figured, what the hell, it was worth a shot, and before long I was standing face-to-face with John at the award ceremony, timidly putting the idea in his ear. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either, so we decided to keep in touch via email and see if we could work something out. I flew home giddy at the prospect of actually playing drums with a man who once played alongside the drummer who had inspired me most. I could only hope that he would accept our offer but didn’t hold my breath, because, well, he was John Paul Jones.