Dave Grohl

Our drum tech, John John, was sleeping. He was so cold, so he took my jacket, put it over this massive heating then and fell asleep on it and woke up on fire. That's right, I remember that. Remember those were the days. Well, by the way, the barbecue in Laurel Canyon, which sounds really fancy, but at that house where you're having the barbecue, it literally what you had microwave for dinner last night. It was like a couple of gorn dogs and like twenty four beers. It was Hello, I'm

mini driver, and welcome to many questions. I've always loved Pru's questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature, but with so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least

about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal faster The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes us similar and what makes us individual.

I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with, and today I am talking to Dave Grohl. I first met Dave when his band Food Fighters were the live music at the FSACHI Runway show in New York. I was dressed in white from head to toe. It was a slightly futuristic look, high collared, stiff fabric. Dave said I looked like ziggy Star, Dust's dental hygienist and

our friendship of twenty three years was born. For all his many achievements, at heart, to me, Dave is one of our most profound storytellers. Nirvana was legendary, it defined and created an entire genre of music. But for me, Food Fighters and the myriad side projects Dave always has in play speak to an ongoing, restless exploration of creative evel. I've never met a person who literally and figuratively refuses to sit still as much as Dave, and to me

it's genuinely what makes him great. The first question is where and when were you happiest? Well, I hope that I haven't been my happiest yet. I have lots of very fond memories. I think I've been happiest more than a few times. But you know, I think you find different versions of happiness. I find a lot of happiness everywhere, even in the unhappiest times, because I sort of search for it. Do you mind for happiness? Is that something that you consciously do? I do. I'm a little bit

more of a big picture type. I try not to get caught in crisis so much that I can't see outside of it. So if I'm deep in it, I stopped and remind myself of the big picture. Was that taught? Was that from your amazing mother or was that how evil was rolled? I'm sure that it's taught in some way, maybe like inadvertently. Yeah, I'm you know. I was raised by my mother, single parent. My parents split up when I was I think six years old, seven years old,

something like that. So my mother raised me in our tiny little house, and she was a public school teacher, and we didn't really have money, and sometimes the heat would get turned off, and the phone would get turned off, and the lights would get turned off, and we'd have scrambled eggs for dinner and things like that. But my mother was really good at making us feel like we had enough all the time. So I had a really happy childhood. I didn't have much, but I was happy,

and that really did come from my mother. It was as simple as going to a jazz club on a Sunday with my mother and realizing that, oh, she's cool and we're friends, but she's my mom. My friends don't hang out with their parents. From an early age, I felt like you play the hand that you're dealt and that's kind of it. And there's no use in wishing

against things you can't change, you know. And so when I would be in the middle of crisis or an uncomfortable situation, I would always try to remind myself of the big picture. I'm sure it goes back to my childhood, but I still feel that way, you know. I think you also set your own bar in a way. You know, some people are perfectly happy sitting on their couch playing video games for twelve hours a day. Other people are only happy when they're skydiving. Yes, and so it's relative.

I like your spectrum Gears of War to jumping out of an airplane. I mean, to be honest, I'm sort of both, you know. Like I could be perfectly happy sitting on a couch with two hot dogs in the Guinness watching Dumb and Dumber again, you know, or perfectly happy running on stage at Wembley Stadium and conducting eight people to sing a song with me. So like those two things, you know, you walk off stage and you you're like, oh my god, the adrenaline. It's like skydiving,

it really is. It's a bungee jump. But then I'm just as happy you know, sitting in traffic and listening to Bill Withers or whatever. And I think it's just because you have to be open to it. My dear friend and love of my life, Pat Smir, who plays guitar in The Food Fighters, he is the most amazing, beautiful person because he has this contagious sense of reassurance where even in the worst fucking tragedy, you can look at each other and laugh, like, how much more absurd

could life be? You know, the ups and downs of life, and and the range of that dynamic. You know, when things are at their peak, you look at each other and you're like, oh, my fucking god. When things are at the bottom, the lowest of the low, you look at each other and you just go, oh, my fucking god. It's strange, though, because I was just talking about this the other day. We have a song called Waiting on a War that just came out, and I wrote the

song about a year and a half ago. I wrote it and when I was young, growing up outside of Washington, d C. My greatest fear was war. In the early eighties, when there was political tension and it was Russia and it was Reagan and there was just this anxiety of you know, conflict and conservatism, and being so close to Washington, d C. I always thought, Okay, there's going to be a war and we're going to be the first ones to get it because this is the nation's capital. And

I was kind of obsessed with it. And then a year and a half ago, I was taking my daughter, Harper, who's eleven years old, to school. I'm driving her to school and she turns to me, she goes, Dad, is there gonna be a war? And it broke my heart because I thought she's now living under this like dark cloud of a hopeless future. Forty years after I did the same thing, I felt the same as she did, and I was heartbroken. I'm like, you know, her childhood is being stolen from her by this fear of war.

And I immediately wrote the song and I wrote it for her. And I'm only mentioning this because I did have this weird, nihilistic, pessimistic side to me as a kid. And it's unfair, like, it's so unfair. Why should anyone go through it? But children, you know, God forbid, they turn on the fucking television and see what's going on. I'd rather have her listen to the song because in the song, I say, you know, I've been waiting on a war since I was young? Is there more to

this than just waiting on a war? Because God? Anyway? So I did have this pessimistic side to me when I was a kid, but I sort of counted it with this maybe naive optimism where I would just think, I know, but birds sounds are pretty, you know what I mean? Like I would just like get on my skateboard and crawl through the sewers and be like, yeah,

you know, I don't know. I think the answer the question that you asked fourteen minutes ago, yes, I mind for happiness because I think you have to live with a sense of hope and you have to be able to find goodness and happiness even in the worst times. I couldn't agree with you more. And I actually think the worst times thrown too relief what is good and what is meaningful and actually helped define happiness a lot better than happiness itself. You've got to find it, you

look for it. I think you're right, you have to make the effort. Okay, So next question, what relationship, real or fictionalized defines love? Fear? Well? The relationship with my mother, no question. Yeah. You know, as as a parent, you understand that the love that you received from your child is just, it's incomparable, It's unlike any other love, and the same thing to be said for your relationship with

your parents. So I've always said her like, that's the one because you know, not only was I had given this unconditional love, but I was also I was given so much more. I was given freedom. She disciplined me with freedom, if that makes any sense. She really did. We were so close, and I had so much respect. Why I still do. I still have so we're still close.

I still have so much respect for that. The last thing I would want to do is disappoint her, because I didn't want to jeopardize not only our relationship, but your freedom. So she was like, you know, okay, you could listen to satanic death metal. It's funny. I'm interested in what I think. The only way of being a good parent is being cognizant of what it is we took from our parents. Both good question. First of all, if you believe any of this, I have a bridge

to sell you. How about that? But then I mean no, I mean, of course, that's the foundation. My mother wrote this book about mothers of musicians right four years ago, and she interviewed all these different mothers. She interviewed Dr Drey's mom, she interviewed for Rall's mom, she interviewed Michael Stipe's mother. She interviewed like fifteen or twenty different mothers. It was interesting because there were parallels. A lot of the experiences were the same, some of the relationships were

a bit different, the mother child relationships. But ultimately you have to imagine that that relationship is your first love, right, and if you become an artist, typically love is your greatest muse. Like that's not only the foundation of who you are and what you become in the relationships you have with other people, but it also you know, it becomes your lens. So that's how you see the world, you know, whether it's in a dark, tortured focus or

it's something more romantic. And like, I mean, a lot of that is that that foundation is laid by your first example of love, and that usually comes from your parents. I remember asking her once about being a teenager in rural Ohio and the forties in the late forties, and um I was asking her about peer pressure, if she had any sort of like social anxieties, and she said, she said, I never really compared myself to anyone else. And I thought, that is the greatest nugget of wisdom

my mother has ever dropped in my stocking. It was like, like, I've never compared myself to anyone, and what a perfect way to be. It's extremely evolved to be able to go. I never compared myself to anyone, not the notion that anyone is better or worse, but rather I am myself. That's a good person to teach you what the scaffolding should look like, around your life, around love, around the way we see ourselves. I love your Mom's cool. Okay,

what question would you most like answered? The thing about UFOs? Does you want like the Kennedy thing? I mean, you know, and then there's the thing about like the Big Bang and God and whatever. I'm more into the uf I'm

with you. I went out My sister worked at Ben and Jerry's in Provincetown when I was sixteen, and I won't to spend the summer with her, and I went out to those dunes every night looking for the UFOs, and one night, I know one night, this guy gave me something to smoke and I saw the goddamn your bugs. It was super cool because the next day, when I worked in the ben and Jerry's with my sister, I was like, listen, the UFOs are for real, And because I was so English, they all believed me. Oh, I

love that. That's what you want to know. No, but really, I mean when I was young, I don't know why or how it started, but I would do that thing where I would lay in my front yard and just stare at the sky. When you weren't thinking about their being a war that was going to wipe you out. I'm sure of course you thought that there were aliens who might possibly be there to come and save you. I mean, I still the scrange. Please, Mr Freud, I have to be honest. But no, the uf Here's the

funny thing about the UFO A thing. So since I was young, Like when I was young, I'd like lay in the front yard and I'd be like contact me where I never saw anything weird, but I'd have these amazing dreams. First of all, I'm in a crazy vivid dreamer. I remember dreams from when I was for four years old. I remember dreams from when I was eight years old and fourteen years old. I still vividly remember them. I

can see them in my mind. I had these crazy UFO dreams where I'm like walking on a hill in somewhere in Italy on the coast, and it's at dusk and right as the stars are coming out, and there's people walking around. It's a beautiful night, and all of a sudden, the stars just like implode and the sky is filled with UFOs and there's these things being projected in the sky explaining the evolution of man. But it's it's not sound. It's like telepathically being explained to you

in your mind. And then a map of the world and how like all the territories have been redefined, and like crazy stuff like that. But here's the thing. I remember once going to a psychic. I wasn't going to the psychic for me. I was dropping off my girlfriend at the time. At the psychic. This is in Sydney, Australia, and someone said, there's this French woman in this apartment complex outside of Sydney. She's the real due. She'll know

you're coming right so you don't even knock. So I drop off my girlfriend and she has this horrible reading and then I walk in and the ladies like no, no, no, no, sit down, sit down. Oh she only speaks French, so my girlfriend, who also spoke French, was translating. So I sit down and she's like, oh, you have a lot of energy. And I'm like, I know, I'm a spa as I've had a lot of coffee. And she's like, no,

you have a lot of energy. Like your hands they're they're like glowing, and I'm like, fuck, yes, this is amazing. My girlfriend was just told like our relationship is not gonna work, blah blah blah blah blah blah. And then now she's got to translate this this the psychic who is saying like, you have psychic power. But the best the best part was she goes, do you see ghosts? And I said, now, I mean I lived in the house that had like creepy things, that the vibe was weird,

But now I don't see ghosts. I said, I have dreams about UFOs and she goes, those aren't dreams. I was like, yes, killer, what person, place, or experience most altered your life? I would have to say the first time I saw a band play on a stage. Who was it? It was a punk rock band. Actually, I had never been to a rock concert, and it was a band called Naked Reagun. They were like an infamous

punk rock band from Chicago. And I can't think of anything else that that changed or formed my future then that moment, I was in this like you know, dark bar that smelled like bleach and beer, and then these four guys walk on stage and ripped jeans and like one, two, three, four, bam, and they started playing, and like my chest was against the stage and their sweat was on me and their spit was on me, and I was getting thrown around um by people with like mohawks, and so I was like,

this is what I'm doing for the rest of my life. In between the ages of like eleven and thirteen, it's a really formative age because you're discovering independence. You're no longer just a child that needs to hold someone's hand when they crossed the street. So you're kind of discovering who you are, and at that time you sort of connect to things that become your identity. Right, I'm really into football, So then you started playing football, but with music.

If the hooks get deep enough that they sort of like catch that newly introspective part of your identity. Oh, so now you have somewhere to put it, Like, Oh, I'll pick up a guitar and I could put it there. I could pick up a drum as I could put it there. Wait, were you already a drumma when you saw no I started playing guitar. I think when I was like ten, so I was playing guitar, but I could understand the drums. I didn't have a drum set.

I had a pair of drumsticks, so I would set up these pillows on my floor in my bedroom in the configuration of a drum set. Yeah, but you're a proper music day. But you play, you play everything, so that doesn't surprise me at all. Well, I don't know how to play everything. I just try to play everything. So it's that whole fake it till you make it thing, you know. I know people that are like accomplished musicians that spent a lot of time taking lessons and being

formally trained to do what they do. But then I know a lot of musicians that picked up records and just sort of played by year, And I think not that either is better. But one of the benefits of learning how to do it yourself is that there really is no right or wrong because you're sort of inventing your own weird theory. So you wind up doing things that some might consider, uh, you know, unusual, but that leads to innovation and progress. Okay, this is my favorite question.

What would be your last meal? And you're not allowed to say you're sotting corn dogs and beer. Now you can if that's what it is. No, that wouldn't be it. It's a toss up. Can I say two different things? Yeah? It can be your lunch and your dinner. Okay. A fift years ago, when the Food Fighters were touring Australia, we were on our way to the gig and I saw a KFC and I said to Gus, our tour manager, Hey, guys, could you get a bucket of KFC for after the show?

I don't think I'd had a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken since I was nine years old at like soccer practice, Like it has been a really really long time. And he's like, yeah, sure, but what do you want? You want extra crispy or I was like the original recipe please just a bucket. So then we go up on stage and we played for two and a half hours. I'm like, and I walk off stage, I've got a tale around my neck. Heading down the hallway, I could smell that ship from fifty yards away, and I'm like, oh,

you got the KFC, like he got the KFC. And I walk in and there's a hot steamhon bucket of KFC right there. I'm like, I'm exhausted. I just, you know, lost five pounds on stage by sweating, so I need salt, like I need I'm like, and I'm like, open it up, and I'm just like, I'm like a raccoon and a dumpster. I was like, I was just like bones flying and then so thirsty. I'm like, okay, there's nothing to drink, except right next to me in a bucket of ice

was a bottle of champagne. So I go and I opened the champagne and I take a sip and then I eat another piece of chicken. Then I go back to the champagne. Then I go to the chicken. I'm like, oh my god, you guys have to try this. You have to try this. Everyone's like, what IM I get a piece of chicken, get a little champagne and see what happens. I'm not like, I can't go into like a culinary diet tribe about the juxtaposition and mouth feel

of fried chicken the champagne. Trust me, it's good. And by the way, in Australia, what do you think the case stands for kangaroo? Many made joke, okay, And then years later I rented a motorcycle while we had a day off in Paris, and we of up into the Champagne region and took a little tour of the Did you tell those French people that they needed to be serving the champagne with KFC? I bet you did. I did. After the tour, we're back in this little garden and

this guy's like white gloves, tuxedo. He's like opening stuff and smelling it. No, this one is not good enough. And then he like opens another one and it was like a rose. He's like, this is rose is very nice with salmon and see food and ship and then he goes he opens up another bottle of like champagne and he's like this is very nice with her, and I excuse me, you know what's really good with a a champagne fried chicken. Motherfucker, what what are you talking about?

Shut up? I love that that was your I love that. That's one. Okay, if there's another one as good as that, you're allowed to eat both of them. The other one is where I grew up in Virginia, just outside of Washington, d C. We're not far from the Chesapeake Bay, the Chesapeake Bay, it's kind of at the edge of d C in Maryland. It's hard to explain, but as a child you spend a lot of time going to the

beaches out there or going to the bay. But there's a specific sort of like culinary history to that area, whether it's oysters or clams or blue crabs, things like that. So when I was young, we would always go down to the wharf and buy seafood from the boats that came directly off of the Chesapeake Bay. So we would get like a bushel of crabs, and there's a there's a specific way to have blue crabs on the Chesapeake Bay Way. They're steamed, they're not boiled. They're seasoned with

this stuff called old Bay seasoning. And the ceremony of eating these things, I mean, from each crab, you're lucky if you get a tablespoon of crab meat, right, But it's more of a ritual. So you steam these crabs. You have a table and you lay newspaper all over the table. You steam the crabs and season them with old bass seasoning. You have some sides, maybe corn on the cob, maybe hush puppies or some sort of like

starchy thing, and a lot of beer. And then you just dump this bushel of steam crabs covered in this seasoning on the table and everyone just sits there and drinks beer and picks crabs for like six hours. And your lips are burning because it's spicy, your fingers are orange because of the seasoning. You've had forty seven beers because it's so salty. But you've wound up telling each other the best stories you have to tell, and so it tastes delicious, and it is my favorite. That is,

without a doubt, my favorite meal. I can't imagine that any warden would allow me that on my no, no, no, in my in my prison which you're in, you can't have crab with with orange seasoning and forty seven beers for sure. Last question, David, in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster of the food fighters. Babe, Yeah, that's it. I mean when we started this band, you know, we didn't imagine that it would last as long as it has.

But I think one of the reasons it's lasted as long as it has is because of what it represents to us. So when Nirvana ended, I couldn't imagine doing that again. But I realized that music was what had kept me alive up until that point, and in order for me to survive, I needed it. So this band, when we first started it, the foundation was this continuation of life, not just music. It was like a continuation

of life. I would have to say it's that because over the years, even in the heartbreaker ups and downs of the last twenty five years, the band has always been not just an anchor, but kind of like it's like a home. And so you don't just feel like you're an island and you're you know, floating and nothingness. It's like I can always lean back on this thing.

And again not just musically, it's a really emotional experience in this it's a real world that we've created over the last twenty five years, and so I don't know where I would be or who I would be without it. I feel like the luckiest person in the world that that it happened. It's an extraordinary example of what I

hope to elicit from that question. I would also add having been on the tour bus with all of you and the band that in addition to it being you know, home and they are such excellent people, it is a proper fart shop around about listen ten hours into a draw, come on, well, you know what's funny. I was explaining this to someone the other day, that that there's really no musical prerequisite to be in the Food Fighters. Barely hardly. That's not that's not the top of our list. It's

more of emotional aesthetic. It's the type of person that you are. But you know, you just you know, it's like, you know, when you meet the love of your life, you know, when you meet your best friend, you know, when you meet that person that you're just like, just like that, You're like, okay, it's just like that. And the same thing can be said musically. It's just like, okay, we're not going to say anything. Put on your instrument and let's talk to each other. For a while, and

that comes from like the person that you are. You guys are excellent people. The radio, it's the it is. It's one of the most fun times I ever had ever. Was the short time I was on tour with you guys. It was Hold on a second. What remember when we played the Monsters of Rock festival. Yeah, when you went on off to Pantera. That was a great show there. I'm going to tell you a story that's going to

kind of blow your mind. Okay, So that day we meet our metal heroes Pantera, right, who are the sweetest people in the world. After the show, the drummer Vinny God Rest, his soul is not with us anymore. Neither is Dime Back. Both of the brothers gone and uh and they were the most beautiful people. I love them so much. Vinny the drummer gives me this his business card, hands it to me and it's a strip club called

the Clubhouse. He goes, man, next time we were in Texas outside of Dallas, you gotta come visit us at the Clubhouse. And I'm like, oh my god, you have your own strip club. He's like, hey, yeah, I do. Am I great? And this is just before I was moving from Los Angeles back to Virginia eight or nine or whatever it was, so I knew that I was going to make this road trip. It was Taylor and I in my Chevy Tahoe driving across country. I mean,

talk about dumb and dummer come on. So we're like, okay, we're going to We're gonna route this tour around a visit at pan Terris Strip Club. So we we sort of like, Okay, first day we're gonna get to Phoenix. We're gonna spend the night there. The next day we're gonna get to Blah blah blah. But on the third night we're gonna get to Dallas. Taylor is going to visit his family. He's got relatives there, and then after we have that dinner, went straight to the clubhouse in

my Chevy Tahoe. The first day of the trip, we're driving, we stopped for gas. We're blaring, you know, fog hat and put a stepping Wolf and Ted Nugent. We get to Phoenix. We go to check into the hotel and I had left my wallet on the gas pump in Barstow, California, but credit cards, I d everything, and I'm like, oh my God, and Taylor said, okay, I'll check us in. I immediately call my accountant and I'm like, dude, I love I just lost all of my credit cards and stuff.

And he said, well, you know it's going to take you a while to get some of those back, but I'll fed X you something. So he does. We get to Dallas, we have the dinner with Taylor's family and we're like, all right, We're going to the clubhouse. And this is like a seven hundred mile detour by the way, like this is not a short cut to Springfield, Virginia. This is like we're taking a hard right and going

way over here just to go to this club. We pull up to the club doorman he says, uh, I see your I d S. Please, And I'm like, uh, oh, well, I actually just lost my my driver's license the other day in California. And uh. He was like, I'm sorry, buddy, I can't let you in. And I said, no, no, no, we will be I think it was like thirty at the time or whatever. I'm like, no, no, I'm I'm i'm I'm I'm of age. He goes, I'm sorry, brother,

I can't let you in. If if if the cops came and found you, I'd get busted and Taylor goes, yeah, but we're friends with and Tara and the guys. The guy's like, he's like everybody's friend. Tara. I tried called Vinnie, couldn't get in touch with anyone, never got into the club. That is the saddest story. Back in the truck with my tail between my legs, got back to Virginia. Are you kidding you? Literally went seven and didn't and he didn't even get in. Yes. But here's the best part

that I think about. Ten years later, I was in Oxnard, California, at a surf shop buying sunglasses from my daughter Violet, who was about three years old at the time. And I walked up to the cash register and the nice surfer girl who worked there says, are you Dave Grohl. I said yes, and she said did you lose your wallet in Barstow, California ten years ago? And I said yes, and she said that was my parents gas station. No, and then she said they still have your wallet. I

gave her my address and they sent my wallet. No. Oh my god. And by the way, you can't follow that, can't follow that, so it you just have to see the big picture. Many brought it all the way back around. You have to find the happiness. It might not be immediate, you might have to wait ten years to get it back. I gotta look at that big picture. I'll drink to that. I'll drink to that, and I'll eat KFC to that.

But food Fight has just released an eleven minute video of Dave performing ev long at old song First seven eight. It features Dave telling the beautiful background story of how that song was written and of the first formative performances of it. Storytelling is an art. Dave is a bit of a master at it. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me, Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby

by Minni Driver, additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me and man Gesh Hetty Cador. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison, No Day, Lisa Castella and Annique Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver