Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel discussed selling drugs as a teen to buy a van in a new Stuff interview.
After 20-plus years, 11 Grammys and record sales of more than 25 million, it’s a lesson the band is learning together. But it’s a world away from what Mendel was focused on as a 13-year-old with a new bass guitar.
“I just wanted to go on tour – I was always the logistics guy of the band, which is a role that falls on bass players a lot. So, in high school I sold drugs to buy a van so that we could go on tour,” he admits. “And then I quit selling drugs.”
And while music trends, side projects and band members may have come and gone, the way the Foos make music has more or less gone unchanged over the past 20 years.
“There are differences [in how we approach making an album], but more than that, there is a consistency in a way things have been done.
“We’ll go out and tour, run through a bunch of shows, then get antsy and Dave will have already started writing and thinking about what’s going to be on the next record.”
The way it goes, the band will spend some time apart, while Grohl nuts out the songs, and then, Mendel says, comes the cry to rally the troops and start work. And what’s it like when the phone rings?
“It’s a two-year process, and we’ve done it enough times now to know what’s involved. It’s exciting but it’s also daunting. So you take a deep breath and ask yourself, ‘Am I ready?’. Then you make sure everything is buttoned up at home and brace yourself for the hurricane, because there’s going to be high water.”
