Full Metal Racket
Foo Fighter and sticks man extraordinaire, Dave Grohl, recently paid homage to
all of his thrash and black metal heroes in his Probot side project and
IReallyLoveMusic’s John Doran jumped at the chance to meet him
After being the drummer in arguably the most important band of the last twenty
years and the front man of the Foo Fighters – not mentioning picking up the
sticks for Queens Of The Stone Age and Killing Joke recently – it’s hard to see
how Dave Grohl had the time or the inclination to mastermind another project.
But the Nicest Man In Rock [tm] has pulled it out of the bag again, this time
with Probot, his defiantly old school metal album featuring all of his heroes of
hardcore and thrash from Lemmy to Max Cavalera from Sepultura.
While recording ‘The Sound And The Shape’ with the Foos, Dave decided that he
really missed the sort of music that he listened to as a teenager from the
punishing hardcore of Corrosion Of Conformity to the ‘none more black’, heavier
than a skip full of canon balls riffage of Slayer. He decided to record an album
influenced by 80s thrash and invite all of his heroes to sing on it. And when
every single person he approached said ‘Yeah’, Probot was born.
Dave is now sitting in a hotel in West London, nursing a three day hangover, and
preparing to go out drinking again in London’s infamous metal hangout, The Cro
Bar. But he is also having a drink with IReallyLoveMusic and is in the midst
of explaining exactly how the album came about and also how his arms came to be
covered in burns. He looks nonchalantly at the sore looking marks all around his
tattoos and shrugs saying: “Me and a friend were drunk last night so we started
putting cigarettes out on each other for a joke. I couldn’t feel anything then
but, man, I can feel it now.”
He is keen to stress that his metal credentials are impeccable and go much
deeper than a bit of casual, drunken self harm and says: “Well I always liked
bands with a harder edge when I was younger. Bands like DRI and Corrosion of
Conformity had a harder edge to them. Dave Lombardo from Slayer was a fucking
hero man - a fucking champion and I was inspired by this band and their music so
I grew up a fucking pot head, Motorhead, punk kid. I just wanted to make a
record that reflected that.
“If there was anyone who appeared on the album that really made me go ‘Yes!’
when he agreed to do it, it was Lemmy. He’s a fucking champion - he’s a hero and
he walks it like he talks it. I realised that I’d never met a real rock and
roller until I met Lemmy recently. And I don’t think I’ll meet anyone like him
ever again. He was walking round drinking JD and coke and smoking Marlboro red.
And it was fucking noon. It was great.”
After a few minutes discussing the heaviest records we can think of including
Gluey Porch Treatment by The Melvins (“That is a <<heavy>> fucking record”) and
Roots by Sepultura (“It’s a fucking crazy record sonically – nothing like that
had ever been done before with all that Brazilian drumming”), it occurs to us to
ask if everyone in Nirvana felt the same way about this sort of music. He
declares: “Kurt and Kris loved Celtic Frost as well as me. It’s weird because
people only really know Nirvana from 1991 onwards. Nobody realises that the
people who made ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ were totally into Flipper and the
Butthole Surfers. That was the music we grew up with and it didn’t necessarily
surface in Nirvana’s music but the spirit of it was there. We all grew up
listening to the same music. It was one of the first conversations that I had
with Kurt and from Celtic Frost to Neil Young to Public Enemy, we all loved the
same music.”
Outside of music young Mr Grohl has been fairly busy as well, as he got married
last summer. Of the day he says: “When we got married we had a very simple
ceremony that lasted for about 15 minutes. About 200 friends and family were
there and we had some good food and good music. We had a Beatles tribute act
called The Fab Four who fucking look and sound exactly like The Beatles. It was
amazing. If you want to have a good party, book The Fab Four. In the middle of
the gig I was shouting ‘Where’s Yoko?’”
One of the many guests at the party, was Dave’s mum, a Virginian school teacher,
who, it turned out, gave him some fairly life changing advice some years
earlier. He says: “My mother advised me to join Nirvana. Thanks mum! I think
that counts as pretty good advice! If anyone just starting out in a band asks me
for advice I usually tell them that music should not be a career decision. When
I joined Nirvana being in the biggest band in the world was not an option. I
joined because I fucking love playing music and I wanted to be in a band. If
you’re not satisfied with playing music and nothing else then you kinda
shouldn’t be doing it. Expectations for kids starting in bands these days are
pretty high. ‘We’re going to have to make a video someday’, ‘Imagine if we were
on a tour bus’, ‘I hope we have a platinum record’ – that sort of thing. But if
you really love doing it, the main focus should be on making music for yourself
- don’t worry about record deals and stuff like that.
“One of the hardest lessons in life I’ve learnt is the one about drugs. I quit
doing drugs when I was 20 and I’m 34 now. I didn’t damage myself but I stopped
because it was starting to freak me out a little. But I’ve seen too many other
people learn about drugs the long and hard way.”
When asked what his poison is now, he grins, runs his hands through his mop
lazily and says: “My thing these days is whisky. I’m a Crown Royal guy. It’s a
Canadian blend which is pretty fucking sweet. It goes down great with a little
bit of coke but just a couple of ice cubes is fine by me. It comes in a killer
purple, felt bag. Pantera got me into it.”
We congratulate Dave on his work on the latest, eponymous, Killing Joke album,
probably the best thing they’ve done in twenty years. He nods earnestly and
says: “It is isn’t it? It was great working with them, it really came together.
Nirvana had a song called ‘Come As You Are’ and the riff was pretty similar to
this Killing Joke song called ‘Eighties’. It was pretty close. They were sort of
pissed and there was potential litigation but it never came to that. But you
know it was 12 or 13 years ago and I totally forgot about it. The first night I
met Jaz it was in New Zealand and we went out and got <<fucking>> trashed. I was
sitting in a hotel bar thinking I’ve seen photos of him but not for years and I
was wondering if I was going to recognise him. In comes Jaz in a fucking
priest’s outfit. We sat at the bar and got fucked up and talked about UFOs, the
oil conspiracy and the World Bank. It was fucking amazing. We walked to another
bar and I had to stop him from getting into fist fights the whole way. He was in
traffic screaming at cars ‘George Bush is a fucking murderer.’ It was amazing
but then someone mentioned the ‘Come As You Are’ thing and he just went for my
throat. I had to run off down the road. But someone calmed him down and we ended
up laughing about it. Eventually.”
Personally, IReallyLoveMusic feels like congratulating itself if it can
manage to get out of bed during the hours of daylight and is always wondering
how Dave manages to be in so many bands at once. He says: “Well, I don’t really
consider what I do a job. It’s not like I’m going to do this for twenty years
and then move to Hawaii. I feel like I’m on vacation all the time. At the moment
I’m focusing on the Pro-Tools system. I’m not going to make a Ministry record or
a house record or anything. When I’m in the studio, I prefer to work with
musicians who know what they’re doing and don’t need a computer to edit what
they’re doing. But I want to stay current. I don’t want to be that 45 year old
guy in the studio who’s like ‘What the hell’s that? What the hell does that do?’
As always, the allotted half an hour or so seems to come to a halt really
quickly but we’ve still got time to ask him out of all the songs he has played
on which is he likes the most, prompting the answer: “I’m very proud of ‘Smells
Like Teen Spirit’ because it touched so many people. Even though it became this
cartoonish, gen-x anthem that spread around the world like fucking ebola. But
when we first played it in front of 300 people at the OK Hotel, the place went
<<off>>. And that was amazing.”
ENDS.
© john doran/ireallylovemusic