by Dave Grohl
Lo and behold, John decided to make the trek out to Los Angeles and test the waters to see if we indeed had the chemistry that I imagined we would, and his arrival just so happened to coincide with my fantastically juvenile birthday party, so I invited him along for a medieval festival of greasy fast-food delights. Poor guy, he was unknowingly about to be thrown into a nauseating, Americanized version of the Middle Ages while his host and future bandmate proceeded to get cross-eyed drunk, smoking joints in the men’s room like a high school delinquent between choreographed jousting tournaments. If he could survive this night of lowbrow theater and teenage hijinks without running straight back to LAX, then we might have a chance at something special. Bless his heart, he kindly suffered my immaturity with a glacier’s patience, and we met a few days later at Josh’s studio, Pink Duck, for our first jam.
I sat down behind my kit and made small adjustments while John was warming up his fingers on the bass, ripping the most uncanny phrases with ease, and then I joined in with his groove, locking in so perfectly, so seamlessly, I thought to myself, WOW! I’m fucking killing it right now!! But what I quickly realized was that it wasn’t me making the drums sound good, it was John. His ability to lock into the drums and adhere to your every beat was amazing, making the groove flow so much smoother, so much stronger than anything I had ever experienced with another bassist. It was in that moment that I knew this experiment was going to work. Once Josh joined in, it was only a matter of seconds before we all realized this was meant to be. There was no turning back now.
We jammed for a few days, getting to know each other while ordering out from another medieval-themed restaurant across the street, Kids Castle (or, as we kindly referred to it, Kids Asshole), feeling each other out and writing a few riffs, eventually coming up with a master plan to pursue this new musical union: we would meet in L.A. for two weeks to write and record, disperse and retreat to our corners for a small break, and then reconvene and continue to build an arsenal of our psych-rock boogie to someday unleash upon the world. It was official.
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
Meanwhile, my day job beckoned. After a long hard year and a half on the road, the Foo Fighters were releasing a greatest hits collection and were asked to write and record a new song to include in the track list to help promote it (otherwise known as “the song on the greatest hits record that is neither great nor a hit”). Discussions of how, when, and with whom we would record it began, and now that I was technically in two bands, this scheduling required a bit of logistical massaging. I wasn’t sure how or when we could do it, but I did know who I wanted to do it with: my old friend Butch Vig.
Butch and I had a fabled history between us and had always been close, but we hadn’t worked together since the recording of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991. For years, I was reluctant to work with Butch again for fear that the long shadow that Nirvana had cast over me after Kurt’s death would negate any of the validity of my own music. Whatever we recorded together would only be compared to what we had done in the past, which is a cross that I have had to bear ever since the day we met. As much as I loved Butch, and even though he is one of the greatest producers of all time, and the drummer of alt-rock heroes Garbage, I just didn’t want that weight to impact what should have been nothing more than a beautiful reunion. Butch’s technique is simple: get big sounds, play big riffs, and make a big song. That’s it. It was sometimes hard to tell if he was even working, because the guy is so laid-back, so chill, you forget you’re on the clock. With his thick Wisconsin accent and gentle studio demeanor, it was also easy to forget that he had made some of the biggest rock albums of all time with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Green Day, just to name a few. But, after some serious soul searching, I decided to forget about what the critics would say and give Butch a call. Life is just too damn short to let someone else’s opinion steer the wheel, I thought.
The calendars came out, and as hard as we tried to find free time, the Foos sessions unfortunately had to overlap with previously scheduled Them Crooked Vultures sessions. We figured if I recorded with the Foos from eleven A.M. to six P.M. and then raced to the Vultures’ studio from seven P.M. to midnight, I could pull it off. No sweat! I thought. I’ll sleep when I’m dead! After all, this was nothing a few extra pots of java a day couldn’t solve! So, soon I began to up my intake of that muddy, black daily grind to injurious levels in order to accomplish this crazy objective.
Oh, and I had another kid.
Harper Willow Grohl was brought into this world April 17, 2009. She was a screaming bundle of joy from day one, so perfect, so adorable. My notion of love expanded tenfold upon her arrival, and I was once again a proud father. I always had a great appreciation for life, but my new baby made me love it all even more, waking excitedly every morning to see her beautiful face, no matter how sleep deprived I may have been. As any parent can attest, the miracle of a newborn overrides every other facet of your life, and you forget about your own survival because you are completely focused on theirs, an ethos that was certainly demonstrated by my mother in my childhood years. I was overjoyed to now have two beautiful daughters and would run to any opportunity to be with them, day or night, regardless of how exhausted I was from my demented schedule of speeding from one studio to the next all day long, drinking coffee like it was an Olympic competition.
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
As if this all weren’t enough to send me to an early grave (HERE LIES DAVID ERIC GROHL. HE SHOULD HAVE SWITCHED TO SANKA), the Foo Fighters had been asked to perform at the White House for a July 4 barbecue that newly elected President Obama was hosting for our military families. Set on the manicured South Lawn overlooking the monuments of the National Mall, it was an opportunity that I could not resist, for a myriad of personal reasons. This was my hometown, after all, and I had spent countless Fourth of Julys on the other side of that White House fence, watching the magnificent fireworks display above from a blanket in the grass as the Beach Boys played on a festival stage in the distance, or attending punk rock concerts at the base of the Lincoln Memorial as an angry teenager, exercising my right to protest on the day where it perhaps meant the most. But this was different. This was a personal invitation to join our first African American president in his backyard to celebrate the men and women who defend our right to have the freedom to celebrate, or protest, or elect our leaders by democratic process. This wasn’t just a barbecue; this was an honor.
Oh, and I was also remodeling my house.
With my ever-expanding family, my once-spacious house began to feel not so spacious. So plans had been made to convert formerly unimportant rooms into something a bit more kid-friendly (and . . . ahem . . . a studio for myself where we would one day record our album Wasting Light). Violet was three years old at this point, and Harper only three months, so there needed to be some reconfiguration to accommodate them, which required some serious construction. Loud construction. With a driveway that looked like the valet parking at a Dodge truck convention and scores of workers wielding power tools that raised the decibel level to Motörhead-worthy numbers, there is only one way to describe it: fucking chaos.
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
For weeks, my new routine went something like this: Wake at the crack of dawn to a newborn and a three-year-old demanding my undivided attention while buzz saws and jackhammers roar in the distance. Make a pot of coffee. Drink said pot of coffee and speed over to the Foo Fighters’ studio. Make another pot of coffee. Start working. Drink that pot of coffee, but also drink strong brewed iced tea between pots, thinking that this is hydration. Make another pot of coffee so that I have some to drink on the way to the next studio (road soda). Arrive at the Vultures’ studio, put on another pot, and drink that over the course of the next four hours as I bash the living shit out of my drums, desperately trying to impress John Paul Jones. Drive home shaking like a leaf from the approximately four thousand milligrams of caffeine that I have just ingested in the course of eighteen hou
rs and unsuccessfully try to get in at least four hours of sleep before waking and doing it all again. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam, on repeat.
Courtesy of Ross Halfin
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
This unflattering period of my mounting crisis is best understood by watching the now-infamous YouTube clip “Fresh Pots,” a two-minute short film that was put together by our old friend and comrade Liam Lynch, who was present during the making of the Vultures record. There to capture the creative process of our secret project, he witnessed my breakdown and compiled my most psychotic moments into a hilarious (and embarrassing) video with the intention of showing it only to the band. When the first Vultures single was eventually released, the band had no music video to promote the song, so my manager asked if we could release the “Fresh Pots” clip instead. I figured that, although it was mortifying, I would take one for the team and allow the world to see a man in the throes of a full-on caffeine binge, acting like a complete maniac. No one will ever see it, I thought. I was wrong. The day after its release, I was in the checkout line at the grocery store and the kid bagging my groceries looked up at me and said, “Hey, man . . . want a cup of coffee?” Fuck. As of this writing it has over seven million views.
I remember the first pain. It was the day before we were to leave for the White House and I was in my hallway at home, stressing about the deafening renovation that shook the house like falling bombs, and it hit me like a knife in my rib cage. The pain was sharp, and I stopped and raised my hand to my chest, terrified that I was having a heart attack but praying it was just a pulled muscle from all of the drumming I had been doing with the Vultures. But something told me that this was no pulled muscle. I had pulled them all before. This was coming from somewhere deeper. I took a few deep breaths to see if it would pass, to no avail. It lingered. Without wanting to raise any alarm and start running around the house screaming, “THIS IS THE BIG ONE!!” like Fred Sanford, I calmly opened up my laptop and foolishly searched “symptoms of a heart attack.” (I now know better than to self-diagnose with the help of some random blogger’s homemade website.) I didn’t necessarily have ALL of the symptoms, but I was definitely experiencing something serious, so I looked up heart attack prevention tips and decided to keep it under wraps. After all, I wasn’t missing this White House gig for the world. Not even a heart attack was keeping me from flying home and playing for the president.
I put two aspirin in my wallet and never said a word.
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
When I arrived at the White House, the pain in my chest was almost soothed by the sweet humidity of DC’s muggy summer weather, and as we prepared to soundcheck on the lawn, I looked out over the fence to the monuments I had once taken for granted. The Washington Monument, towering in the distance like a maypole for the city to perform its complicated dance around. The Jefferson Memorial, adorned by rows of cherry blossoms in the annual rebirth of spring. And the Lincoln Memorial, the site of many of the Fourth of July concerts I attended when I was a young punk rocker. These were not the Beach Boys; these were musical protests. Dubbed the “Rock Against Reagan” concert, it was held every year on the Fourth of July during his administration, a gathering of punks from far and wide who came to sing along with their favorite bands in unified opposition to the president’s ultraconservative policies. I was no poli-sci major by any means, but I did join along and lend my voice to fighting for the freedom to express myself however I pleased. Once Reagan left office, the concert was renamed “Rock Against Racism” and I attended each of those shows with the same fervor and intention. This particular memory resonated with me that day, as not only was I on the other side of the fence this Fourth of July, but so was President Obama.
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
Our road crew did their best to look formal, opting for black cargo shorts instead of black sweatpants, and as the stage was being readied, we all made friends with the kind White House staff of security guards and electricians. The one bit of sage advice I remember: “If you guys need to use the restrooms, there’s one over there and one over there. Whatever you do, don’t go pee in the bushes. There are people in the bushes.” Noted.
After a quick run-through of the songs, we were led up to the house to meet Barack Obama for the first time, and as we walked into the Blue Room, overlooking the barbecue below, we were greeted by the president and First Lady with a very down-to-earth, personable, and warm welcome. The casual nature of the day’s ceremony defused the stately tension that usually surrounded most political events, so we chatted and laughed in a relaxed manner, almost forgetting that we were actually standing with the president and First Lady, Michelle (who, to be honest, seemed more presidential than the president himself). As we stood there talking and taking pictures, I noticed that Pat wasn’t his normal, carefree self. He seemed quiet, which was unlike him. When we returned to the South Lawn, he shared with me the reason why. This was Pat’s first time in the White House, a place where his great-grandfather, a former enslaved person, once stood in line to meet and shake hands with Abraham Lincoln.
Our trip to the White House had now taken on a whole new meaning.
That night, as we watched the fireworks overhead, I looked up at the First Family standing on the balcony, and I was filled with emotion. History was being made. And as I saw the illuminated faces of my wife, my children, and my mother staring up at the sky, I was filled with not only nostalgia but pride, honored to share this historic moment with them. And for Pat, my most trusted and faithful friend, I was filled with love. We had all made it over the fence together.
LIFE WAS PICKING UP SPEED.
I returned to Los Angeles and immediately called my doctor. “Dude, I’ve been having chest pains,” I told him. “Are you having them right now??” he said, sounding more concerned than usual (and that’s pretty concerned). “Ummm . . . kinda . . . ,” I replied. He told me to jump in the car and get to his office immediately, so I sped out the door and split traffic like Moses. I burst into his office and within moments was lying on a table, poked and prodded and wired up like a vintage synthesizer. He watched the paper readout from the EKG as it spilled onto the floor and said, “Hmmmm . . . not seeing anything here . . . let’s get you on the treadmill and then we’ll do an ultrasound . . .” I was taken to another floor where I was again covered in little electro-patches, and told to jog on a treadmill like the Six Million Dollar Man. Then I jumped onto a table where they covered me in gel and watched my heart throb via the wand of an ultrasound. “Hmmmm . . . not seeing anything here . . . let’s get you over to Cedars for a CT scan . . .” I was starting to feel like the little girl from The Exorcist, being subjected to test after test, when really it was just a simple demonic possession. Maybe I needed a priest?
After sitting with the doctor at Cedars and finding no signs of real danger, he explained to me that I needed to take it easy. As much as I felt indestructible, I was no superman, and I had to take care of myself in order to take care of the ones I love. My passion for life could be a bit much sometimes, so much that I pushed myself a bit too far, but if I wanted to stick around awhile, I needed to be a bit more mindful of my mortal limits. His prescription? “Play drums only three times a week, have a glass of wine before bed, and lay off the coffee.”
TWO OUT OF THREE AIN’T BAD. DECAF BLOWS.
And life is still picking up speed.
Swing Dancing with AC/DC
“Do you mind if AC/DC comes to dinner?”
This text from my wife, Jordyn, will forever go down as the most surreal, ridiculous, and painfully obvious question that I have ever been asked in my entire life. Dinner with AC/DC? The band that practically walks in the shadows, never to be seen in public, only to appear on giant stages adorned with massive exploding cannons and giant amplifiers stacked to the rafters? The band that has personified fist-pumping, headbanging, foot-stomping bad-boy boogie with an outlaw’s grin and a devilish wink for over forty deafening years? Not to m
ention selling over two hundred million albums and inspiring generations of young rockers to devote their lives to three chords and a pair of ripped jeans?
I should know. I was one of them.
It was 1980 when AC/DC unleashed their monumental concert film Let There Be Rock on the unsuspecting world of overly glamorized pop music, and it quickly made the rounds to all of the hip movie theaters across the country that showed midnight movies on the weekends. (A long-lost phenomenon that most people my age remember as a stoner rite of passage. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Wall, and Heavy Metal were some of my favorites.) A live performance filmed in Paris only a few months before the passing of their original lead singer, Bon Scott, the film is a tour de force, with the world’s grittiest, grooviest no-bullshit hard rock band serving up a megadose of sweat, denim, and high-voltage rock and roll. If you were a wannabe student of all things rock, this was a master class in how to kick fucking ass and take fucking names.
At eleven years old, I was already familiar with AC/DC, as their albums Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and Highway to Hell were two of the most cherished records in my growing collection, so this movie was something I had to see. The Washington Post listed that the film was playing at the historic Uptown Theater in Washington, DC, as a part of their Wall of Sound concert series. So my best friend at the time, Larry Hinkle, and I made a night of it—chaperoned downtown by his father in their burgundy Datsun 280ZX, the poor man’s Porsche.
As Larry and I were dropped off at the ticket booth, I nervously expected a theater overflowing with denim-and-leather-clad hoodlums. But when we stepped inside I found that there were only a few hard-core AC/DC fans there, scattered in small groups throughout the rows and rows of empty seats, waiting for the film to begin while unsuccessfully trying to hide the flickering lighters that were sparking their pinner joints and homemade pipes. Like two awkward kids in a socially suffocating lunchroom, we tried to decide where to sit, as the place was practically empty and we were afraid of getting a contact high from the sweet-smelling weed wafting throughout the theater. Knowing that it was the Wall of Sound concert series, we were tempted to sit near the sound system down front but opted for something toward the back so that we wouldn’t have to crane our skinny necks to see the giant screen. Thank god we did, because little did we know, there was a concert-sized PA hidden behind those curtains, and as the house lights went down it was soon apparent that this was no regular matinee showing of Star Wars.