Rick Astley discussed performing “Never Gonna Give You Up” in Japan with Foo Fighters in a new Radio X interview. He mentioned Dave Grohl telling him he wanted to ape “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the song, to make it sound like the Nirvana classic.
“I met those guys in such a weird unplanned way,” he told Radio X’s Chris Moyles. It was just nuts, so that was amazing.”
Talking about getting to the side of stage to watch the band, he said, “So [Dave Grohl] just clocks me at some point, but I thought he was looking at other people, because Chris Shiflett, who’s one of the guitar players, he’d come over and given a hug to someone on side of stage…”
“And he just came and gave me a big hug. And then 20 minutes later, a guy walks over and handed me a mic and I’m looking at Dave Grohl and he’s now looking at me beckoning me over.”
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen right now. I’m really jet lagged as well, which really helped if I’m honest. And I just had no clue what was going on. I didn’t know whether he was going to say: ‘Everyone, this is that dude’.
“So we walked out there and he just whispers in my ear ‘we’re going to do your tune, but it’s going to sound a bit like Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
Referring to why he screamed: “Come on you motherfuckers” to the crowd, Astley confirmed: “People think I was trying to be rock n’ roll. I was just crapping myself”.
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