We've referred to Dave Grohl as the coolest motherfucker in music before. He's taken on the Westboro Baptist Church, gets in mosh pits for Metallica, and tops fans' beers off from stage.
But how did Dave learn to be so cool? With some help from Pantera! Grohl discusses how a chance meeting with Dimebag Darrell and crew helped shape his idea of what the backstage vibe at his shows should be like:
"Basically, the way the Foo Fighters work, we get along with everybody," Dave explained. "For years, we've always been that band, when we get backstage at a festival, the first thing I do is I pick up a bottle of whiskey and I just walk around banging on dressing-room doors to see who's fun, to see who's cool. It could be Tricky, or it could be Muse or it could be… whatever — I just look for pals.
He continued: "Actually, that's something I learned from Pantera. Back in the day, we did a show with Pantera and we became friends and I would go see them on tour all the time. And I realized that you'd be backstage at a Pantera show and there'd be, like, Marilyn Manson is in that corner, and Kato Kaelin is in that corner, and Britney Spears is in [that corner]… Everybody loved to hang with Pantera. So, to me, that was the coolest thing about them — they were the sweetest people and they had this open-door policy.
"But also with our band, we don't really plan too much when it comes to making music," Dave said. "So when you're at a studio, like the studio where we recorded, every week there was someone else in there. Like, Glenn Hughes from Deep Purple was down the hall with Jason Bonham, and then Joe Bonamassa and then Lady Gaga is over there and then Wolf Alice is over here and Rufus Wainwright is over there. So the three months we were there, we were meeting all these people, we were drinking in the parking lot, we were outside smoking, and you just make friends, and it's literally that easy."
When asked by the interviewer if the open invite includes Justin Bieber, Grohl responded "I think yes. I mean… come one, come all, y'know. We're not building any walls here around the Foo Fighters okay? It's an open-door policy,” before joking there would be "extreme music vetting."
