Dave Grohl: (whistles)
LF: First pay-per-view ever for the Foo Fighters.
DG: That’s absolutely true.
Taylor Hawkins: Everybody’s doing one now, aren’t they?
DG: Kinda.
LF: Whose idea was it?
DG: Our manager’s "how could I make some money? Yeah! We’ll have a pay-per-view special."
LF: But is it any different than going on and doing, like, Letterman?
DG: Hell yeah, look at all these cameras and things! Well, Letterman and stuff - the thing that’s so nerve-wracking about doing Letterman is that you have four minutes, it’s one song, your career’s really riding on this one, man, it’s the new single, you gotta do it.
TH: You’re just like, you don’t settle, and like, a song, it seems like, at least with us, is played best when we’re kind of settled in, and don’t think about it, you just play the song, and it’s smooth, and it’s nice. But, like, there’s none of that on Letterman, you know; it’s really cold in there!
DG: Amped, you’re amped!
TH: And you’re really nervous, and you go out there..
DG: you’re freaked...
TH: and it’s a blur.
DG: Ladies and gentleman, it’s a blur, and you do it, and the first whole half of the song you’re shaking, and then finally right as you end, you go 'ahhh.' And then it’s done.
TH: And you literally like hold the drumstick like that, ‘cause you’re shaking.
LF: How cold is it in the studio? I’ve heard it’s, you know?
DG: Fifty, it’s fifty-something degrees.
TH: Yeah, it’s real cold.
DG: He keeps it so cold in there. But something like tonight you’ll see that we come out, and we’ll completely spazz out for the first like eight minutes, because we’re so scared to play.
LF: Do you still get nervous before shows?
DG: Oh my god. Of course.
TH: Definitely.
LF: Do you get more nervous knowing that there’s a television camera in front of you, or playing to a stadium in front of 30,000 people?
TH: Uhh..
DG: Uhh...
TH: Different...
LF: I think you just answered the question.
DG: Different vibe, I think.
TH: Nerve-wracking both ways.
DG: We’re just...all...Taylor doesn’t get as nervous anymore. Do you?
TH: No.
DG: I just get so horrified before every show.
TH: I do get pretty nervous though, I do.
DG: Whether it’s an acoustic thing, or a rock show, or a TV, or whatever. I get nervous doing interviews.
LF: I just thought it was really cool though, when David Letterman said that the Foo Fighters were his favorite band, and he asked you to come play when he got out of the hospital. When you first heard out about that, I mean, you had to have been excited.
DG: Yeah, that was pretty flattering. I’d never heard of anything as big as that, for our band. That was a big deal. You know. So. But I mean, the guy had just had his chest torn apart, so we figured we felt kind of obligated to go.
LF: Did you send him a get-well card or anything?
DG: Cigars. Just tons of cigars.
LF: (laughs) When he was in the hospital. So the television experience aside, you make great videos.
DG: Thank you.
LF: The videos are hysterical, they’re innovative, in the last two, is there a theme going on? One was, you know, in an airplane, you’re up in space now.
DG: I think that probably the biggest theme that runs through our videos is that we’re always all the characters. Whether it’s the 'Monkey Wrench' video where we’re playing to ourselves, or the Mentos parody where we’re everybody in the commercial, or the 'Everlong' thing, we’re all two or three different people.
TH: I think that the theme for the videos, at least from this album, has come from the lyrics.
LF: Yes.
TH: Where he didn’t have a theme probably, or maybe you did, but just naturally everything lent itself to flying, and to taking off.
LF: When did you come up with the concept for the latest video? Are you sitting around in the bus, coming up with the concepts for the videos?
DG: For the 'Next Year' video, we had a treatment sent to us by a director, and usually when you get video treatments they’re written, and this one he had just edited a bunch of space footage to the song. And so we just got videotape. And we kind of put in the videotape, and it was done, really. All we had to do was insert our faces into the thing, we thought, 'wow, this is great!' So we spent a bizillion dollars putting ourselves into about 20 seconds of the video. (laughs)
LF: And I crack up every time I see 'Learn to Fly', because you’re all playing all the different characters. How long did it take to do that, because you had to play different
characters in 'Learn to Fly'?
TH: Three days.
DG: Three days. Three long-assed days.
LF: Is that really grueling? How many hours a day?
TH: That was, that was the most grueling..
DG: That was the most grueling because I didn’t have time to really sit within any one character, you know, I was just constantly going from the gay guy to the little girl to the fat person to the flight attendant, so, you know, I really had to find myself after we were finished with that, because I’d been lost in so many people. (odd snorting noise)
LF: And I had a Tenacious D fan want me to ask you about Tenacious D, and your relationship with them.
TH: Tenacious D.
DG: Well Tenacious D are the greatest band in the world. Not many people know that. But, uh, [they’re] from Los Angeles, they claim that Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and I think it was AC/DC got together, and had a two-headed love child - that is Tenacious D, and they had an HBO special, and they’re making a movie, but they’re also making a record. Because as hilarious as they are, they’re really talented.
TH: Oh yeah, they can really sing good songs.
DG: Really talented. Amazing voices.
LF: They are talented. So maybe in the future, a Tenacious D/Foo Fighters tour?
DG: We’re trying to work that out.
TH: Well they played with us in LA, and they went down really well, too, didn’t they?
DG: They won over great.
TH: They played 'Kielbasa'.
DG: Which is a story about Jack Black’s, uh, dipstick!
TH: And they played 'Sex Supreme' the double-team cream dream.
DG: And 'The Road.' Which is a hit.
TH: 'The Road' is...you can say it..
DG: The road is a b-i-itch, my friend, but it’s the only fucking road I know. So that’s, you know...
TH: It’s a hell of a song.
DG: Sorry, is this PG-13?
TH: No, it’s cable.
LF: So, at what age...
DG: Stop!
TH: (laughs)
LF: At what age did you both become musically aware? What were you listening to and at what age?
DG: Puberty...
TH: I don’t know, I liked music all the way since...I liked 'Star Wars', when I was about five. I had the soundtracks, you know...and I liked the Jackson Five, when I was a little kid, a lot.
LF: All-time favorite band? Taylor?
TH: Ooh, I don’t know...I don’t know...
DG: Queen, come on dude, that’s easy for you.
TH: Yeah, Queen...but I mean, I don’t even have a Queen CD with me right now, on the road. I go through phases, you know...But pretty much that era of music, I would say.
LF: Dave? Any all-time favorite band?
DG: I’d probably have to say Led Zeppelin. But it’s a toss-up between Led Zeppelin and Black Flag. So...one of the two.
LF: And what bands are you listening to now? Because I know at shows, you’ve got to get kids coming up to you, and say, 'Hey, I’m in a band, would you listen to my CD?'
TH: Right...
DG: Well, the new Queens Of The Stone Age CD is amazing, everybody knows that. We have this joke, that we’re going to switch all their dressing room signs, so that they won’t say Queens Of The Stone Age, they’ll say 'Critics’ Choice.' So from now on, we just refer to them as 'Critics’ Choice'.
LF: (laughs)
DG: Um, that’s great, Supergrass is amazing, um, I love Cat Power, this girl Chan Marshall that’s from Atlanta...and um...tons of stuff.
LF: How involved on a daily basis are you guys with the website, because it’s really interactive. It seems like it’s updated on a daily basis.
DG: I wrote...last night I wrote a long letter to the kids to put up there. 'To the kids' - they’re all my age! And there’s this guy Ed Dame, and this other guy Schu, who work on it, and they do a great job. And Schu comes out on the road a bunch, and takes pictures and writes reviews, and we have this thing where we can call in, and leave a message, and it goes directly onto the website. So it’s great. The kids can feel like really they’re on the road, I guess.
LF: Yeah, I remember an interview you actually did with yourself, as Christopher Walken...
DG: Oh my god. (laughs) See, usually it’s just I’m so bored, and in my hotel room, and I’m, 'Hi everybody, here’s the story of my life today.' Or get on the thing and make stupid messages. I’m just bored. I’m a spazz.
TH: I have never done that.
DG: It’s fun.
TH: I know, I’m just so, like...I don’t know, I’ve never done that. I should do it...I’ll come over to your room next time you’re gonna do it and I’ll do it with you.
DG: Promise?
TH: I promise. It’ll be fun.
LF: Yeah, don’t make Dave do all the work, you gotta help him at two in the morning and...
TH: He likes doing all the work...
DG: Control...
TH: He loves it.
LF: Cover songs, on the website. You’ve got a section talking about cover songs and it just runs the gamut. I know you jam a lot of these songs, but anything from AC/DC to Tommy Tu-tone, to Shania Twain...does this happen spontaneously? Do you sit around as a band, and talk about what cover song are we going to do?
TH: No.
DG: Oh, I know, I’m going to bust into a cover tonight I already know what it is. I’m not telling!
TH: Is it the one we were just playing?
DG: Nope. You’ll see. But um...we just whatever. It’s funny, because I was just talking to Nate, recently, when we were rehearsing for this tour. And we’d written out every song we’d ever played, and it was like 50 songs or something like that. And I wrote out all the cover songs. And I was like, wow, should we do....there was like a Gary Numan cover, and a [????] cover, all these different covers, and I thought, should we keep doing these? I mean, some of these we did three years ago. And Nate, our bass player, said, 'You know, I’ve never told you this', this is six years later, 'I hate doing covers, man.' Just like...dude! This is six years, come on.
LF: He tells you after six years.
TH: Oh well, he’ll deal with it.
LF: 2001, let the fans know, what are your plans for 2001?
DG: Make another record.
LF: You going right in the studio now?
DG: Well we’ve been touring for a year already, so it’s kinda like, go home...Taylor’s building a studio in his house, I’ve got a studio in my house, and go back and forth, and everybody writes music, and we’ll probably just go off, do our own thing, get together, do a thing together, go off and do our own thing and then come together at some point and pool of all the songs together and decide what’s good, what’s not, what direction you want to go with, what producer you want to work with...we still haven’t really figured it out.
LF: Last question, any guilty pleasures?
TH: Musically?
LF: Sure, musically, you know, when you’re on the road and you’ve got two hours and you can go goof off and do something...
TH: Pornos...no, just kidding.
DG: I kind of like Lear jets.
TH: Yeah, he’s definitely starting to get into that stuff.
DG: I like Lear jets a lot. Every now and then...
LF: I’m telling you, it’s that whole space, up in air thing.
DG: Well, it’s fun...
TH: It’s not even that, it’s just that it’s so easy...
DG: It’s so easy. You don’t have to go to an airport really...
TH: Airports suck.
DG: It drives right up to the step of the plane...we don’t do it all the time. I don’t spend money on much, man. I really don’t. I bought a house, I got a studio, I got a truck...I really don’t. I spend money on my family - that’s about it. Room service.
TH: (yawns)
DG: I don’t have time to spend money on anything. I spend money on my friends...
LF: Taylor’s yawning, so I’ve got to wrap this interview up.
TH: He bought me an eight-hundred dollar bong the other day.
DG: I bought Taylor an eight-hundred dollar bong...it’s really pretty.
LF: (laughing)You get it at Spencer’s gifts or something?
DG: No, it was just...
TH: A Valley smoke shop or something...
DG: Valley hippy weed dude, glass-blown dragon’s head or whatever the hell it is.
TH: It’s insane. It doesn’t even work that good but it’s still a classic.
LF: Thanks, guys, for the interview. Good luck tonight.
