AMERICAN WAY JANUARY 2015 DAVE GROHL LEARN ...adampitluk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/APDaveGrohl.pdfPhotography by Andrew Macpherson 66 JANUARY 2015 AMERICAN WAY 066_Jan_FEAT_FooFighters

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LEARNTO FLY

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On the Road with Dave Grohl and

the Foo Fighters

Gourmet Paris

Where Farm-to-Table Dining Began

Winter Wonders

Our National Parks Are Spectacular

in the Snow – and Crowd Free!

WIN100,000

AAdvantage miles - Pg. 20

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66 IT STARTED WITH A SPARKTwenty years after Dave Grohl assembled the Foo Fighters, they’ve hit the road to fi nd home. BY ADAM PITLUK

74 HEAD CASESHow two soccer-obsessed Brits found fame through sharing their passion with America. BY ERIC CELESTE

80 PARIS GOES LOCALFarm-to-table cuisine was invented in the French capital; after a long absence, it’s back again.BY ELLISE PIERCE

90 WINTER SPLENDORA January or February journey into America’s national parks off ers its own unique beauty and opportunities — and far fewer crowds. BY STEVE LARESE

FEATURES

2015 | VOLUME 48 | NUMBER 01

6 JANUARY 2015 AMERICAN WAY

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Dave Grohl,

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American Way

by Andrew

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006_Jan_REG_TOC.DECEMBER 4.indd 6 05/12/2014 09:41

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010_Jan_REG_Masthead.December 5.indd 10 09/12/2014 09:54

DAVE GROHL

It Started With a Spark

TWENTY YEARS AFTER DAVE GROHL

ASSEMBLED THE FOO FIGHTERS, THEY’VE HIT

THE ROAD TO FIND HOME.

DAVE GROHL

TWENTY YEARS AFTER DAVE GROHL

ASSEMBLED THE FOO FIGHTERS, THEY’VE HIT

THE ROAD TO FIND HOME.

Story by

Adam PitlukPhotography by

Andrew Macpherson


066_Jan_FEAT_FooFighters DECEMBER 4.indd 66 05/12/2014 12:23

“I was exploring all of

these diff erent cities

and learning the

history and

the stories of all

these diff erent

people, but at the

same time, I was a

part of the

experiment.”



before the network became the 24/7 reality show you know and love.

Then, one day in September 1991, your parents were tuned to MTV when a video from a Seattle group caught their attention. It depicted a pep rally in a school gymnasium, featuring a three-person band that played a de-cidedly unpep-rally-y song. The stu-dents were subdued; a few tapped their feet, but most slumped for-ward. The cheerleaders went through a robotic routine.

The janitor slow-danced with his mop. Then the drummer, this fresh-faced skinny kid with a shock of unkempt brown hair, banged on the skins like Animal from The Muppets. The gym turned into a madhouse, and the stu-dents rioted. A few weeks after seeing this Nirvana video, hair-metal bands limped off to their dying places, and the

genre of grunge was born.A swarm of similarly grun-

gy, ire-infused bands emerged from Seattle, and Nirvana’s national anthem, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” became the bat-tle cry of a generation. Lead singer Kurt Cobain became a Jedi master over the next two years, and that skinny

Skywalker of a drummer, Dave Grohl, became as known for his harmonious voice as for his percussion chops. Nirva-na went on to sell more than 100 million albums worldwide, including the sem-inal recording from MTV Unplugged, which stripped down the reverb and distortion and showed that this Seattle band had some serious talent. It also provided one of the most haunting re-frains in rock ’n’ roll history. When the guitars, bass and drums cut out and

Cobain and Grohl harmonized to the re-petitive lyrics, “All in all is all we are,” a look of total serenity — of absolute calm — settled over both of their faces.

Children: Go YouTube “Nirvana — All Apologies (MTV Unplugged).”

The crowd had a delayed reaction, most likely because it was just as en-tranced by what it had just heard as it was in awe of the musicians who sang it. The song was also foreboding. Kurt Cobain would take his life four and a half months later, and just like that, Nirvana was gone.

That’s why more than 20 years af-ter the recording of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York, taped only a few blocks away from where we’re sit-ting, I ask Dave Grohl about that show and about that song.

“Oh, yeah,” he starts, looking

Dave Grohl

with Nirvana

bandmates

Kurt Cobain

and Krist

Novoselic at

the MTV

Video Music

Awards in 1993

DAVE GROHLTHE CHEERLEADER

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Listen up children, because this here is a history lesson about themusic your parents grew up on. Long, long ago, right about the time Daddy had to start shaving regularly and Mommy started noticing Daddy noticing her, a musical revolution was underway. Your parents, who were still in the getting-to-know-you stage,

were grooving to hair-metal bands like Poison and Ratt and Cinderella on the mainstream FM radio stations. They were watching mini-movies of their favorite songs on MTV long


toward the ceiling, searching his head for details of a long-ago faded memo-ry. Then he straightens up and nods. A smile purses his lips. “That show was supposed to be a disaster. We hadn’t rehearsed. We weren’t used to playing acoustic. We did a few rehearsals and they were terrible. Everyone thought it was horrible. Even the people from MTV thought it was horrible. Then we sat down and the cameras started roll-ing and something clicked. It became one of the band’s most memorable performances.”

It did something else. While that album went on to win Nirvana’s only Grammy Award, it prepared Grohl for a decades-long career as the frontman of his own band. The Foo Fighters have been together for 20 years now. They’ve

won 11 Grammys. And what’s more, Dave Grohl can offi cially claim that he’s responsible for shaping two generations of music listeners. That’s right, children: The music your parents grooved to back in the day is being made in contemporary times by the same dude. He’s showing no signs of slowing. Quite the contrary, actually. Young Skywalker has become a Jedi, like Cobain before him.

HELLO, I’VE WAITED HERE FOR YOU

He sits there like Yoda, legs crisscrossed, arms resting on his knees. It’s mid-morning in Midtown Manhattan, and from the cozy con-fines of his hotel room near 57th and 7th, Dave Grohl looks relaxed in his

well-worn blue jeans, long-sleeve black shirt and bare feet.

In about an hour, he’ll walk two blocks with the rest of the Foo Fighters to the Ed Sullivan Theater for a rehears-al with Ann and Nancy Wilson from the band Heart. They’ll jam to Heart’s “Kick It Out” on Late Show with David Letterman after they nail it down during sound check. It’ll reign as thunderous and as soul stirring as last night’s rendi-tion of the Black Sabbath classic “War Pigs,” performed with Zac Brown. The audience tomorrow and the following evening will be similarly mesmerized when the Foo Fighters play with Tony Joe White and Rick Nielsen.

But not just yet.Grohl drinks his coff ee while

indulging me with a rock ’n’ roll trip

The “Five

Husbands” of the

Foo Fighters,

according to

Dave Grohl:

“Each person has

their place in the

dynamic of the

band and their

responsibilities.”

CHRIS SHIFLETTTHE MUSICIAN

TAYLOR HAWKINSTHE ENGINE

PAT SMEARTHE GURU

NATE MENDELTHE BAROMETER

AMERICAN WAY JANUARY 2015 69

>


down memory lane. It’s a completely apropos scenic pull-off of a conversa-tion that dovetails well with the subject matter of his current project. Sonic High-ways is the eighth studio album from the band that’s been a family for 20 years. For this project, Grohl, guitarist Chris Shifl ett, bassist Nate Mendel, drummer Taylor Hawkins and former Nirvana fourth man and longtime Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear brought along an HBO camera crew to document making the album in eight iconic music cities. It’s a project Foo Fighters faithful have been anxiously awaiting. Especially me, since I had a heads-up about the project during a chance encounter with Grohl in Hawaii three months earlier.

“This all started with one idea,” Grohl says in the fi rst episode of Foo Fighters Sonic Highways, “[that] the environment in which you make a record ultimately infl uences the end result.” His asser-tion is that local history and local peo-ple work their way into the music. Quite literally, the Ohio-born, Virginia-raised,

S e a t t l e - a s s o c i a t e d L.A. resident is the liv-ing embodiment of a career spent traversing the globe, let alone the country. And his music is a real-time refl ection.

“I was exploring all of these dif-ferent cities and learning the history and the stories of all these diff erent people, but at the same time, I was go-ing through that same thing,” he says. “I was a part of the experiment.”

REASONS ONLY KNEW

He was part of something else. Grohl, who has been in the spotlight for almost 25 years and who has been interviewed a gazillion times, became the journalist, interviewing his heroes like Buddy Guy and the iconic Ben Jaffe from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in New Orleans. Perhaps it’s because Grohl has been inter-viewed by the best rock writers in the world – guys like David Fricke and Paul Brannigan — that he has osmotically

received a master’s degree in journalism. And perhaps that is why the interviews he conducts on Sonic Highways are so compelling.

“As I’m asking these questions, part of me is trying to get me to tell these beauti-ful stories that I’m vaguely familiar with, and part of me is just asking questions because I’m inspired. Just as these peo-ple are inspired to do their thing, I was inspired to do mine by them.”

That’s been the bandleader’s lot as much as his role over the years. Sonic Highways is indeed a weighty under-taking, but the other boys in the band come to expect original ideas from Grohl. The previous album, 2011’s Wasting Light, was recorded in his L.A. garage using only analog equipment. “I wanted to take the band out of our comfort zone, put the instruments in an unfamiliar environment – for them

maybe, because I love garages and I’ve been playing in them my whole life. When you get more into the story of the music, that’s when it really gets its hooks in you.”

But there has to be a mon-umental amount of trust in the frontman for the rest of the band to go along with risky musical moves. It’s easy for fans and critics to analyze the end product and take to the blogs and the message boards about whether it worked or not. Internally, however, a fi ne line has to be not only recognized, but appreciated among the musicians, lest their internal arguments trump the music conversa-tion on those same blogs and boards.

Twenty years ago, when they fi rst formed, they were just trying to get on and off the stage without the show being a complete catastrophe. Then they started to get comfortable. “We have a saying in this band,” he says. “ ‘If it gets any better, it’s going to get worse.’ So we try not to think about stuff too much.”

Over time, much as with family, too much camaraderie can do one of two things: 1) breed contempt or 2) foster trust. Luckily for the legions – and for the band’s peace of mind – it did the latter.



Grohl on the

band: “We

cling to each

other. We

always have.”

>


Grohl says it’s evident in their everyday lives. When they get off a plane, for in-stance, and there is a motorcade of vans ready to take them to the hotel, they’ll all pile into one. During the Letterman marathon of rehearsals and shoots, there were three tiny rooms – each one barely big enough to fi t four adults – for them to lounge in. All fi ve piled into one.

“We cling to each other,” he says. “We always have. It’s like I have four husbands.”

MAKE MY WAY BACK HOME

On a lazy summer day at a hopping resort on Hawaii’s Big Island, the pool scene looks as though a piñata full of children had broken open. My two daughters, ages 5 and 8, splashed and laughed and played. They buddied up with two other girls of the same ages. The sisters, Violet and Harper, became immediate summer-vacation besties with my girls, Maddy and Lilly. I was in the pool playing with them all, and after awhile, Violet and Harper’s daddy joined in.

We dads have an immediate bond when our kids are entertaining themselves. This dad, however, was dif-ferent. He looked familiar, especially that shoulder-length brown hair and the beard. I also recognized his tattoos from so many shows over so many years. We talked about kids and where we lived and where we were from – typical dad talk. Then I introduced myself.

“I’m Adam, by the way,” I said while extending my hand.

“Hey, man. I’m Dave.”After poolside talks for a couple of

days, Dave Grohl the rock star quite quickly revealed himself as Dave Grohl the family man. He also demonstrat-ed his humility and his photographic memory. As he told me about his forth-coming Sonic Highways project months before it would be promoted, I quizzed him on it like a rabid fan. “We did all kinds of experimental music with this. I got back on the drums – I played drums in a band before the Foo Fighters.”

I started giggling at that. “Brother, the best concert I’ve ever seen in my life was Nirvana in

Akron, Ohio, on Halloween night in 1993.”

“No way!” he replied, now animated. “You were at that show? When Kurt was dressed as Barney the dinosaur and I was wrapped in gauze like a mummy? That gauze was so tight that the roadies had to try to cut it off me while I was still playing!”

That show was more than 21 years ago.

“How do you remember a concert at the University of Akron from that long ago?” I asked.

“I remember all my shows.”

TIME AND TIME AGAIN

Back in New York, we’re wrapping up our interview. Dave Grohl has Letter-man to do, and he needs to jump in the shower. Before we part company, I want to know – on a human level – what the trick is to not only staying relevant after all these years, but how it is that the sea-soned, rounded-out band has been able to play nice this long.

“We don’t ever take it for granted,” he says, pausing for a moment to refl ect on the words. “I honestly don’t know what life is like without the Foo Fighters. I can’t imagine. So when we get onstage, it’s a good thing. And while we’re on-stage, we’re enjoying it. Always.”

We’re enjoying it. Always.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCE, SAY IT ALOUD

This concludes the day’s lesson, taught to you by a Jedi. The takeaway isn’t just how to make a band work, but how to make your relationships work with your parents, your spouse, your partner. The trick is to not just get on-stage night after night, year after year. The trick is to enjoy what you’re doing and appreciate who you’re doing it with. Pile into the same van. Squeeze into the same room. Don’t ever take for granted what you’ve got.

That’s how you do it, children.



ADAM PITLUK has interviewed Michael J. Fox, Angelina Jolie and Michael Stipe for American Way. He is the author of Damned to Eternity and Standing Eight. G

ET

TY

IMA

GE

S/S

TA

FF

The Foo Fighters

packed London’s

Wembley Stadium

in 2007 and sold

it out again twice

in 2008.


Documents

AMERICAN WAY JANUARY 2015 DAVE GROHL LEARN ...adampitluk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/APDaveGrohl.pdfPhotography by Andrew Macpherson 66 JANUARY 2015 AMERICAN WAY 066_Jan_FEAT_FooFighters