This is a Call

by Paul Brannigan

  Still, being a critic’s band doesn’t always pay the bills – being a ‘fan’s band’ does. And Foo Fighters were definitely the latter, as they proved beyond argument in the summer of 2008. Almost a year on from their show-stealing performance at Live Earth, the band’s agent Russell Warby booked the band as headliners at Wembley Stadium for the evening of 7 June 2008. They gave themselves almost six months to sell the 86,000 tickets required to completely fill the national stadium; as it turned out all the seats were sold in a few hours. A second date was pencilled in for 6 June; this, too, quickly sold out, adding up to 172,000 tickets purchased in a matter of days.

  For six months prior to the first of the two concerts, Dave Grohl would ask himself just what his band had up its sleeve in order to rise to the challenge of filling this vast space with both his band’s music and, just as importantly, its personality.

  At approximately 10.30 p.m. on the evening of 7 June Grohl brushed his hair away from his eyes, looked out across the expanse of Europe’s second-largest stadium and pronounced the night ‘the greatest fucking night in our band’s lives’. As he spoke, a smiling grey-haired man in a khaki army shirt holding a sunburst Gibson Les Paul walked onstage from his left, while another familiar face appeared stage right.

  ‘We knew from the beginning that this wasn’t going to be just any other show,’ said Grohl. ‘We’ve been planning this shit for six months, a long time. We knew that this country, you guys, you made us the band that we are today. So we’d like to invite a couple of very special guests, Mr Jimmy Page and Mr John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin …’

  Seven months earlier, Grohl had sat three rows behind me at London’s 20,000 capacity O2 Arena, as the reunited Led Zeppelin played the most hyped gig of the decade, as a tribute to late Atlantic Records mogul Ahmet Ertegun. So frantic and full-on was Grohl’s air-drumming that night, mirroring every snare, tom and kick drum beat hammered out onstage by Jason Bonham, the late John Bonham’s son, that he was literally shifting the air above my head.

  At Wembley Stadium, Grohl finally realised his life’s ambition to play drums for Zeppelin. Strictly speaking it wasn’t Led Zeppelin – with the greatest respect, as a vocalist Taylor Hawkins is no Robert Plant – but, as Grohl began thundering out his hero John Bonham’s instantly recognizable intro to ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’, it would have taken a brave soul indeed to tell the man of the hour that he wasn’t actually playing with Led Zeppelin. As dreams come true go, this one was going to take some beating.

  In the early hours of 8 June, Foo Fighters’ party retired to the newly opened Whiskey Mist club in London’s up-scale Mayfair district, a club which soon enough would play host to England’s royal princes, Hollywood’s party-loving A-listers and the young, beautiful and bored scions of the world’s wealthiest dynasties. Here, surrounded by his oldest friends, Grohl stood in quiet conversation with Jimmy Page, the pair now looking less like master and student than two dignified peers and equals. But even as he sipped slowly from a bottle of beer, even as he observed the animated, laughter-filled conversations of family, friends and colleagues, even as the post-gig adrenalin rushed around his body, there must surely have been one question uppermost in Dave Grohl’s mind, a question not for tonight but for the months and years ahead:

  Where now and what next?

  These days

  It’s time for us to go out and be a rock band again. Someone has to do it, right?

  Dave Grohl

  4 July 2009. It’s Independence Day weekend, and America is in the mood to party. The moon is shining down upon Washington DC and the Black Eyed Peas’ hit single Boom Boom Pow, sitting pretty at the summit of the Billboard Hot 100 for a twelfth consecutive week, blasts from every shop-front, souvenir stall and boombox in the nation’s capital. The stately tree-lined avenues around the National Mall are a bustle of colour, movement and noise, as tens of thousands of tourists and DC metropolitan area residents jockey for the best vantage points for the evening fireworks display.

  Dave Grohl stands on the South Lawn of the White House, flashing a big bad wolf smile as he gently strums ringing open chords on his 1965 Pelham Blue Trini Lopez Standard guitar. In the distance he can see the lights on the Washington Monument blink red against a cloudless dark blue sky. Before him, seated at tables festooned with red, white and blue ribbons, are a battalion of US military personnel and their families, guests at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this evening for a barbecue dinner honouring their service to the nation. And in front of the troops, discreetly flanked by Secret Service minders, sits their Commander-In-Chief, Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America, and his wife Michelle, the First Lady, their eyes fixed upon the stage as they wait for Foo Fighters to launch the night’s pre-fireworks entertainment.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ says Dave Grohl, slowly taking in the vista before him. ‘Who’d have thunk?’

  ‘Okay, so here was my day, two days ago. I started my morning at a Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony for a smooth jazz artist called Dave Koz. Jordyn’s cousin is an agent here in Los Angeles and he used to represent Dave Koz, so Dave’s been a friend of Jordyn’s family for, like, 20 years and he’s a great dude. Anyway, he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right in front of Capitol Records, so I started my day at this ceremony. And I’m hanging out with Barry Manilow, Dave Koz, Kenny G and Johnny Mathis, and those guys knew who I was! So Barry Manilow is like, “Hey man, how are you?” And I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Wow! I saw you in the airport in Dublin once and I almost fainted!”

  ‘So then I go practise with my band … and it’s good. From there, I go home and have dinner with my beautiful family and then I get a call to go to the studio and record an instrumental with [former Guns N’ Roses duo] Slash and Duff [McKagan]. So the three of us sit in a room, we run through the arrangement, hit ‘Record’ and do it in one fucking take, and it’s bad-ass: I’m sitting on my drum stool watching Duff and Slash try to figure out an arrangement, and my face just curls into a smile because I’m like, “Wow, these guys, they’ve both died like fifteen times and they’re still friends, and this is great.” And then I call my friend Nick Raskulinecz who’s right up the street mixing the new Deftones record and I go up and listen to the new Deftones. That was one day. So as I was riding home on my motorcycle, that I love, I think, “Really? This is my life? I get to do this every fucking day? Cool.”’

  It’s September 2009, and Dave Grohl and I are having lunch in his suite at the Sunset Marquis, West Hollywood’s most laid-back, immaculately styled, rock-star-friendly retreat. Sprawled on a couch, all elongated limbs, gleaming teeth and fading prison-styled tattoos, Grohl is in excellent form: he’s a blur of constant motion, tapping out beats on his thighs, bouncing upon his heels, excitably jabbing the air with his fingers, his every riff and yarn punctuated by explosive, highly expressive swearing.

  The telephone rings, and he excuses himself to answer it.

  ‘No, François, I’m good …’ he says quietly. ‘No, really, I’m fine. Honestly. Thank you, François. Thank you.’

  ‘I haven’t stayed here in ten years,’ he laughs as he returns to the table, ‘but last time I stayed here I’m sure I didn’t have a butler.’

  Over the course of the next four hours Grohl would have occasion to revisit many more memories – some pleasant, some poignant, some evidently still raw and painful – as he retraced his journey from the basement punk rock clubs of Washington DC to that Independence Day performance on the White House lawn in an interview timed to coincide with the release of Foo Fighters’ Greatest Hits album.

  By his own exhausting standards, 2009 had been a relatively low-key year for Grohl. A self-imposed career sabbatical had afforded him the opportunity both to enjoy some genuine downtime with his family – expanded in April with the arrival of his second child, Harper Willow Grohl, a sister for three-year-old Violet Maye – and to take stock of his own life. And as he bounded down memory lane on that balmy September afternoon, it was c
lear that the 40-year-old musician could himself scarcely believe how his life less ordinary had unfolded. The kid who learned to play guitar by playing along to The Beatles’ Red and Blue albums could now count Paul McCartney as a personal friend; the authority-baiting punk rock rebel was now on first-name terms with the President; the homeless drummer who scribbled song lyrics on the back of supermarket receipts now had his words screamed back into his face by stadium crowds. To paraphrase Talking Heads, there must have been days when Grohl found himself in his beautiful house with his beautiful wife and asked himself, well, how did I get here?

  ‘Man, I never thought any of this was possible,’ he admitted. ‘But at the same time I’m proud of a lot of the shit I’ve done. I feel so lucky and – for lack of a better word – blessed that I’ve got to do all of these things, and accomplish this much. And do I think it’s luck? No. Do I work fucking hard? Yes. Am I fucking good at what I do? I think so. But am I gonna tell everybody in the world that I think I’m the greatest songwriter and I’m an amazing drummer and I’m a fucking huge star? No, that’s not my fucking style. That would mean that I care too much about how what I do is perceived. And there’s a part of me that takes pride in my disregard of other people’s ideas of who I am or what I’m all about.’

  In a previous interview with Grohl, conducted almost a decade earlier, I had suggested to him that his outgoing, open and gregarious nature had, somewhat ironically, ensured his privacy; that the perennial cliché of Grohl as ‘The Nicest Man in Rock’ allowed the ‘real’ Dave Grohl to remain hidden in plain sight, unknown to all but his closest friends. It was an analysis with which he did not take issue.

  ‘I don’t know why, but I don’t open up to many people,’ he admitted at the time. ‘You just don’t give a piece of yourself to everyone. I don’t understand the need for someone to expose themselves entirely to the world. I think that’s odd. If there were two million people that knew me really well that would be kinda weird. There’s only a handful of people that know me really well, and then there’s a whole lot of others that know me enough.’

  In 2009 I put it to Grohl that, for all his band’s upward mobility and his own increased media profile, little had truly changed in this respect.

  ‘I don’t consider myself a loner, but it’s just not important to me to be everyone’s best friend,’ he conceded. ‘Maybe it’s a defence mechanism. It would take a long time for anyone to get to know me. Definitely after the Nirvana thing exploded it changed the way I relate to people – not in a bad way necessarily, in a lot of good ways I’m sure, but fuck yeah, I want to keep a lot of me for me.

  ‘It might have something to do with growing up in such a small family. There was my mom, my dad, my sister and I, and our cousins and grandparents lived far away, and I had two best friends, and that’s all I fucking needed. I’m a horrible fucking pen pal, I never answer my phone, I would much rather stay at home and hang out with my daughters and mother and wife than go out to a bar on a Friday night. And I already get to hang out with my best friends Taylor, Nate, Chris and Pat for a living.

  ‘And, like, the “Nicest Man in Rock” thing … it’s cool, but it’s funny to me because the guys in my band would probably tell you otherwise. There’s a side of me that’s so territorial that certain things make my fucking claws come out, and turn me from the trademark quote “Nicest Guy in Rock” to a very difficult person. Because I do have borders and boundaries. There are certain things where I’m like, “Man, don’t even fucking go there.” I have no problem going up to a paparazzi and going, “Are you fucking kidding me?” Which I’ve had to do a few times. The most important thing for me is my family, and my health and happiness, and making sure everyone’s cool.

  ‘But honestly, of all the things I’ve accomplished on my own and with different bands … it’s overwhelming sometimes to me,’ he admitted. ‘I can’t even imagine where to go from here.’

  Even as he spoke, though, a whole new chapter of Dave Grohl’s life was unfolding. That very afternoon Grohl was due to resume tour rehearsals with a new band, a heavyweight rock supergroup he had willed into existence during an interview with MOJO magazine some four years earlier. Asked then by writer Stevie Chick whether he had any new musical collaborations in mind, Grohl stated, ‘The next project that I’m trying to initiate involves me on drums, Josh Homme on guitar, and John Paul Jones playing bass. That’s the next album. That wouldn’t suck.’ Four years on, with Grohl behind the drum kit once again, that band would take flight as Them Crooked Vultures.

  ‘At the time I wasn’t entirely serious,’ Grohl admitted to me that September afternoon. ‘It was more wishful thinking, a “Here’s what I hope happens next” thing. John Paul Jones had played on the In Your Honor record, and that was the first time I’d met him. He’s a sweet guy, a great player and a brilliant musician. So when I was asked what I’d like to do next that was the first thing that came to mind, to be in a band with John, and Josh, who I have a connection with musically that I just don’t have with anybody else: as a drummer, playing with him, we share this direction, this frequency. It’s unspoken and intangible, almost like ESP. And we work well together, because he likes Black Flag and bad disco and so do I. I like shit to have groove but I like it to be heavy, and that’s what we did together with Queens. After I went back to the Foos, I always hoped that I’d play with Josh again; I just didn’t know when or how.

  ‘So then last year it got to the point where both of us were tired of touring with our bands, and tired of being in our bands. The responsibility of these two bands that we’ve created could be sometimes overwhelming. I don’t know about Josh’s situation, but with Foo Fighters it still amazes me that we’ve taken this thing from a fucking demo cassette made in five days to selling out two nights at Wembley Stadium: it’s crazy and it was never the intention. So you get there and it would be very easy to say, “Alright, let’s fucking pack it up, pack it in, that’s it, we don’t need to do anything else, what more can we possibly accomplish ?” So rather than do that, you have this sort of pressure release valve that you can hit and keep everyone from losing their fucking mind. And those are the side projects that we all have – Taylor with the Coattail Riders, Shiftlet with Jackson United and Nate with Sunny Day Real Estate – those are the things that keep Foo Fighters from breaking up.

  ‘So back then, in 2005, I had mentioned that because I needed another release, an “In Case of Emergency Break Glass” band, because if it gets to the point where I fucking hate Foo Fighters I better have a very good band to be in outside of it, in order to keep Foo Fighters from breaking up. And honestly, as a drummer, I can’t think of two people I’d rather play with. Josh is my favourite guitarist and John is my favourite bass player, so I had a hunch that the three of us together would make a great band. And I was fucking right.’

  Grohl, Homme and Jones met for the first time to discuss their new musical project on the evening of 14 January 2009. They did so not in a Los Angeles record company boardroom, flanked by lawyers and management representatives, as might have been appropriate considering their lofty profiles within the music industry, but rather in the Anaheim branch of the Arthurian-themed restaurant chain Medieval Times. It was the night of Grohl’s 40th birthday – an occasion he later hailed as ‘the fucking greatest midlife crisis a man could possibly have’ – and as knights jousted for the entertainment of his 200 invited guests, Grohl, Homme and Jones, each wearing a paper crown, pulled apart hunks of roast chicken and glazed ribs with their bare hands and swapped ideas about what (im)pure fun their new project might be. A few days later the trio met up again at Homme’s Pink Duck studio in Burbank, plugged in and began to jam. ‘And within three minutes,’ says Grohl, ‘I realised that this was going to be the best fucking band that I’ve ever been in.

  ‘It was not unlike a blind date,’ he said, ‘where you cross your fingers and hope it’s not awkward. Because jamming with the wrong person can feel just as awkward as fucking someone you don’
t like. But we started playing and we didn’t stop, at all, for maybe 30 minutes. The first jam was long and it was fun and everyone had smiles [on their faces]. And it sounded fucking great. So we did that for a few days and then looked at one another and said, “Well, should we be a band?” And that was that.’

  ‘As soon as the Queens thing ended we were looking for an opportunity to do this again,’ admits Josh Homme. ‘I can’t stand people who embrace mediocrity in music, and every time I’ve played with Dave he has absolutely gone to the limit of his abilities. Dave’s goal is exactly like mine, to keep recharging your battery and finding new ways to stay creative. He’s a really happy person in a sea of people who can’t stand themselves.’

  Unusually in an industry where there are very few genuine secrets, the trio managed to keep details of their new venture under wraps until July 2009, when Homme’s wife, Brody Dalle, acknowledged the existence of the project in an online interview for her new band Spinnerette: ‘I’m not at liberty to talk about it …’ she said, ‘[but] the thing … which I’m not supposed to talk about is pretty fucking amazing. Just beats and sounds like you’ve never heard before.’

  The following month, at the stroke of midnight on 9 August, Them Crooked Vultures made their global début at the 1,100-capacity Metro club in Chicago, premiering a hard-driving, classic rock ’n’ roll sound Homme classified as ‘perverted blues’. Two weeks later, in keeping with the clandestine nature of their ‘career’ to date, the trio (augmented by live guitarist Alain Johannes from Spinnerette) strolled onto the stage of London’s Brixton Academy to play an unannounced hour-long set as support to the Arctic Monkeys, whose new Josh Homme-produced album Humbug had been released that same week. And three months after that, without very much hype or hullabaloo at all, the band’s own self-titled début dropped.