-Welcome back, everybody.
I'm here with my co-host, Dave Grohl!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
You can see new episodes of his series,
"From Cradle to Stage," every Thursday on Paramount+.
I lost my voice. This is what happens when
you hang out with Dave Grohl. -Yep.
-Yeah. -One of the things that happens.
-I love co-hosting the show with you.
I think this is fun. -This is amazing.
I can't -- I'm so happy that you are letting me share your desk.
-Well, I -- We have, like --
This is our first time we have more than 50 people.
We have 100 people in our audience tonight.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-It's coming back. -We are coming back.
-Coming back. -I know it.
-Bringing one of our favorite acts to come --
I know it's a big audience. When was the last time
that you ever played in front of 100 people?
-Uh, like, 1987. -Yeah, exactly, yeah.
-Something like that. Long time ago.
-Do you remember that?
Like, when -- First starting out and getting --
Like, 100 people was a lot of people.
-Yeah, I mean, when I first started out, you know,
I started out in neighborhood bands and stuff like that.
And then I joined a band -- a punk-rock band
that actually toured the country and Europe
when I was, like, 17 years old, so I started touring in vans --
little vans and playing, like, little venues
and stuff like that when I was, like, 17 or 18.
And so that was kind of where I, like, cut my teeth
and learned how to do it.
And when I joined Nirvana, it was sort of the same way.
Like, we were in a van
playing small places that held 100 or 200 people.
And then the band got really big really quick.
And so -- But, I mean, we used to play --
When I first joined Nirvana,
we would play places a tenth the size of this place.
And then it just kind of went -- pyew!
-Did you freak out when people know the words to your song
and are singing it back to you and singing it with you?
-Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the best part
of being in a band. -Really.
-Where you're in front of an audience
and they're singing along with you,
and it becomes this really beautiful communal moment
that, you know -- that everybody is connected.
That's the best part.
And the bigger the audience, the better when that happens.
-Yeah, because they're all doing it.
-It's amazing.
-You have a new documentary out called "What Drives Us"
on Amazon, which is cool.
They have a special thing on Amazon video. It's Coda.
-Yeah. -A Coda Collection.
So, it's for musicians,
people that love music, want to support music.
It's about vans and whatever, a tour bus, or whatever --
whatever drove you to the gig.
-Yeah. -Whether it be a, you know,
whatever, a Nissan Maxima or whatever vehicle you had.
I love that. -You had to squeeze
all of your friends and all your stuff
into this one little thing
so that you could take your music to another place
and share it with more people. -Yeah.
-And the funny thing is, in that documentary,
that you see that, like, you know,
Beatles did the same thing.
So I interviewed younger bands that are, like,
stuffing all this equipment
into a tiny van and sleeping in it.
And then I'm interviewing, like, Ringo Starr from the Beatles,
and he's talking about how the Beatles did the same thing.
Everybody kind of does it the same way.
The Beatles' fart in their --
I got fart stories from Ringo Starr about the Beatles.
-In the -- Really? -Yes.
-They don't. -They did.
They do. -They don't now.
-I think they may. -They don't now.
-Still. -Absolutely not.
-Yes. It's true. -Is it odd to say
that you're friends with the Beatles?
-Yes! -Does it feel weird
or you're just -- -Absolutely.
Well, we first -- I mean, I grew --
That's how I learned how to play music.
I had a Beatles songbook and a guitar.
And I would just listen to the records and do that.
So the first time you -- you meet one of them,
it's just the one-dimensional becomes the three-dimensional
and you kind of freak out a little bit.
But then over time, like, if you become friends
and you jam with each other, you know, it never wears off.
I mean, there was one time when I had --
My third child, Ophelia, she was born,
and Paul was in town with Nancy,
and they said, "Hey, we want to come over and see the baby."
So they came over to the house and --
I mean, the first thing I did was hide all the Beatles stuff.
Like, you never know.
You never know how much Beatles stuff
you have in your house until a Beatle comes over.
-It gets embarrassing. -You're just like, "Oh, my God."
-"Tonight Show" mugs. -Yeah, it's crazy.
And so he came over, and we hung out,
and there was a piano in our living room,
and as he was leaving, it's like he couldn't resist.
And he just sat down and he started playing
"Lady Madonna" on the piano in my living room.
And you're just -- I mean, it's blowing your mind.
And then my daughter, Harper,
who was, like, 4 years old at the time,
she runs into the kitchen, she gets a coffee cup,
she fills it full of spare change
and puts it on the piano like a tip jar.
[ Laughter ]
-That's a good bit. That's a good bit.
-That was cool. -Did he love it? He loved it.
-Absolutely. It was amazing.
-That's kind of the fun part about all the giant bands,
I want to say, is that their senses of humor --
They have a sense of humor, and they're fun.
They're great on stage. They're great musicians.
But they're fun, and they're funny and they laugh.
And I feel like you have that, too.
-Well, you have to imagine --
Like, you know, you can't take it too ser--
I mean, anybody that's seen, like, a Foo Fighters video
or, you know -- or this that we're doing right now.
-Yeah. -Like, you know, you kind of --
You have to -- You have to be real
and be true and passionate, and you have to honor the craft
of making music, but then everything else,
you just kind of have to take with a grain of salt.
-You didn't want to really practice.
You didn't want to rehearse.
-We do have a saying in the Foo Fighters
that, "If it gets any better, it's gonna get worse."
So we -- Actually, I don't like to rehearse,
because I like to get out on stage
and just have it be raw and real,
so it's not like this big choreographed thing.
So when we get up there,
it's, like, that moment, and it's super real.
-That's wild. -Yeah.
-Were you always like that? I mean, you have --
There's another series based on a book
that your mom wrote called "From Cradle to Stage."
-Yes. -Basically raising a rock star.
-Yeah, my mom -- Okay, so my mother was
a public-school teacher for 35 years,
and when she retired, she --
I was like, "Mom, don't do that cruise-ship thing."
Like, you know, like retirees. I was like --
I was like, "I got a cruise ship. It's a tour bus.
Like, let's go." And she just jumped --
And she started going on tour with me.
And I gave her a laminate, and she would just go hang out.
I'd be on stage playing. I'd get off stage like,
"Where's my mom? Where's my mom?"
And she'd be like, you know,
drinking beers with Green Day upstairs.
[ Laughter ]
-Yeah, mom! -She's very cool.
She's very cool.
And so -- But then, when she was on tour, she was like,
"Where's all the other moms?"
Like, "Where are all the other moms?"
So she went to go find these mothers to interview them
and talk to them about what it's like to raise a musician.
So, in the book, she talked to Dr. Dre,
and she talked to Mike D,
and she talked to Pharrell's mom.
And she talked to Zac Brown's mom, Miranda Lambert's mom.
And then -- So she made this great book.
And then we did a documentary series,
and that's the thing that's on TV now.
It's awesome.
-That's super cool. And I didn't bring it up,
but congrats on being inducted into
the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame -- again.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Mom, you did pretty well! You did a good job, Mom!
Here's a clip.
Here's Dave and his mom, Virginia,
in "From Cradle to Stage."
Take a look.
-When I saw a Nirvana show
where you destroyed all the instruments
at the end of it, I was aghast.
♪♪
After growing up with not more than 10 cents
left over each month, I thought you knew
that one should not waste valuable materials.
♪♪
-Uh, first of all, I didn't start it.
[ Laughter ]
-I know. Okay.
-Yeah. You just finished it. That's all. You got a point.