NME
Foo Fighters are hitting the stages of T In the Park and Oxegen this weekend, so why is Dave Grohl keeping one eye on the sky?
Are you bit of a sci-fi fan, then?
"When I recorded the first Foo Fighters record in '94
I'd been reading books on UFO sightings, so I named
the band after the air force slang term for one.
Then when I needed to come up with a name for the
record label I was starting, I chose Roswell Records."
What was so special about Roswell?
"A UFO crashed there in 1947! Well, something
landed on a farmer's ranch. He called up the airbase
and said, 'One of your things is on my property:
So the air force sent someone out who realised they.
hadn't seen it before and brought it back to that
very hangar. Then everyone shouted their mouths
off saying, 'We found a UFO!', so the military took it
to Texas where they say it still is."
Really? Sounds like a tall story to us...
"Here's what I think happened. After World War II
our country was hyper-sensitive to anything.
So when people starting talking about seeing UFOs
it was a threat to national security. Whether it
was an alien craft or not, the authorities covered
it up. One thing you should believe is that the
government doesn't always tell you what's true."
Do you believe in little green men?
Anyone who refuses to believe there's life out there
is an idiot. It's practically proven that in a universe
of billions of stars and suns there could be life
somewhere else. Whether it's flying around in discs
and has big eyes and green heads, I'm not sure."
Have you been abducted by aliens?
"I saw something strange on the first Foo Fighters
tour. We were driving through the Southwest at
sunset and we saw what looked like a Ferris wheel
slowly spinning in the sky, leaving a cloud tracer. It
lasted for a minute then stopped, and soon enough
there were helicopters circling the area where we
saw it. We were probably near some military testing
base, but it was a nice omen for the band."
Right, that's enough flying saucers. You've got two
discs of stuff on your new album 'In Your Honour':
how will you decide what to play this weekend?
"We're playing only the noisy stuff. It's such a treat
to open a show with a song like 'In Your Honour',
I was hoping these songs would become big. sweaty
singalongs. We played the other night in Toronto
and to hear the entire audience sing 'Best Of You'
is exactly what I hoped would happen. So I hope
people are ready and have done their homework."
Will you ever play the quieter songs?
"We're going to do some acoustic shows in small
venues where people can sit down. We'll assemble
a mini orchestra of the people that helped record the
album. It's going to take more than the four of us to
perform that stuff live, we just need to get the right
people and do some practice. I'm looking forward to
having a show where people listen rather than punch
each other in the head for an hour and a half."