Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl recently discussed why he has stayed away from hard drugs in a new GQ interview.
Unlike other rock stars old enough to know better – Grohl is now an utterly disreputable 49 years old – backstage there’s no stretching out, no gargling with cider vinegar or sipping Pepto-Bismol, no downward dog or warrior two, nor any cold-pressed acai shakes to be taken prior to “house lights out”, that split second of total darkness that signals to the crowd the moment has come to “totally lose their shit”, as Grohl puts it so eloquently.
“We ain’t Maroon 5!” he chuckles in mock horror when I wonder how grand the band’s rider has grown since going from punk-rock poverty to selling more than 30 million albums and playing at the White House (twice) for President Obama.
Instead, the frontman’s strict pre-performance prep, his “last rites”, consists of a can of Budweiser no sooner than an hour before stage time, then up till the moment he goes on he’ll shoot consistently staggered shots (I counted five and partook in three) of Jägermeister, coined “RockQuil” by Grohl. Although there are other, faster, substances floating about this evening, Grohl himself admits to me that he has “never once taken cocaine, heroin or speed. Sure, a little weed every now and again. But can you imagine me on amphetamines? I never shut up as it is.”
Next, he’ll suck up one last Parliament Light, take two lasts swigs of beer, followed by three tablets of nicotine gum before Gus Brant, the Foos’ long-standing, ever-stoic tour manager, pokes his head from the other side of the black curtain that separates the band from the rest of the labyrinthine backstage city and informs Grohl and the rest of one of the biggest, hardest-working, not to mention highest-earning rock bands on the planet (Grohl alone is worth more than £200 million), “Five minutes, guys. You ready?”
