Blender
Despite drug problems and a “chud” last album, Dave Grohl’s fun-loving Foo Fighters remain the band we’d most like to bro’ down with. Their latest adventure? A double album! With Norah Jones! It’s a crafty plan. But will it work?
In Your Honour was supposed to have been a greatest-hits album. But despite a more-than-respectable repository of rock-radio singles to their credit ("Big Me," "Everlong," "All My Life"), the band didn't think they could fulfill the "hits" part of the package. And besides, it would have meant putting off a new record for another few years, and Grohl is not one for downtime.
  "There are some bands that take four
years to make an album," he says, reconvening in the upstairs kitchen with the rest
of the band: Hawkins, 33, guitarist Chris
Shiflett, 34, and bassist Nate Mendel, 36.
  "I don't understand how you can do that.
To me, that means you just don't dig what
you do. I would lose my fucking mind. I
almost lost my mind after a year, even
doing other things."
  In the period following One By One's
release, Grohl maintained a level of showbiz workaholism not seen since Gene
Hackman in the '80S. Not only did he get
to perform with Bruce Springsteen and
Elvis Costello at 2003's Grammy tribute to
Joe Strummer, but every other Tuesday or
so there was another new release with his
name in the liner notes, either as a guest
star, producer or full-fledged member. The
list of his cohorts is long and rocking:
Queens of the Stone Age, Cat Power, Probot, Nine Inch Nails, Garbage, Men Without Hats ... okay, so the last one is still just a pipe dream, but you get the point. The
day this guy takes a real vacation, America's music chain stores will have to shut
down for a week.
  But Grohl has always made the Foo Fighters his main priority, a commitment
tested during an iffy period between
1999's There Is Nothing Left to Lose and
One By One, what with Hawkins's chemical romance and the hectic re-recording.
"It was a traumatic period," Hawkins says.
"We were just happy we got it done."
  Grohl doesn't bother to make excuses
for the last record. "Half of it is chud," he
says of One, which nonetheless sold a million copies and featured "Times Like
These," which for a while seemed like the
go-to get-'em-pumped anthem on Monday
Night Football. "There was a lot of filler. I
didn't realize it when we were recording,
or when we were mixing, but I realized it
when we started playing shows, and half
that album was completely deleted from
the set list. That's just a telltale sign."
  It's not a stretch to presume that the
band see Honor as something of a make-good. Their mantra? "Absolutely no filler,"
notes Shiflett. "There couldn't be any fluff,
like on Sandinista!"
  For a double record, Honor is remarkably restrained. Each disc stays well under
the one-hour mark, and the rock songs do
sound leaner: The album's opener and
first single, "Best of You," builds on the
Foos' amped-up, hooked-in tradition. The
real surprise, though, are on the acoustic
album, which Grohl says was inspired by
Ry Cooder's sleepy Paris, Texas soundtrack. Instead of just unplugging a few
harder numbers, the songs feel as though
they were meant to be played on a porch,
dogs milling underfoot. It's a chancy venture; even though the Foos have busted out
the 12-strings before, there will be the
unavoidable comparisons with that other
well-fed L.A. outfit with the famous drummer-turned-singer...
  "I don't like the Eagles," Grohl says
firmly. "Doing a song like the Eagles is like
looking in the mirror and realizing you
have a bad haircut, there's a fern behind
you and you're sitting in a wicker chair."
  There are even a few notable cameos courtesy of two distinctly different Joneses:
Grammy magnet Norah sings on the
"Girl From Ipanema"-inspired "Virginia
Moon," and mystical Led Zeppelin bassist
John Paul plays mellotron on a few
numbers.
  "He's like a Monty Python character,
he's so cool," says Grohl of JP. "He walked
in with his mandolin like a minstrel, [and]
immediately went into 'The Rain Song.' I
was worried, [because] I have all these pictures on the wall down there of Jimmy
Page and John Bonham. And as he was
leaving, he pops his head back and says,"
and here Grohl breaks into a dead-on
impression of a wry, sprightly Brit, "'You
know, it wouldn't kill you to have a picture
of me on your wall.' And then we brought
him to the Clive Davis party, where he got
to see what's-her-name ...Fantasia. It
was like taking John Paul Jones to American Idol."
The image of Grohl kicking it with
both an ex-Zep and a TV talent-show victor
is a spot-on snapshot of where the Foo
Fighters fit in these days. Fame-wise, they
have a good gig: They sell lots of records,
make enough money to goof around as
much as they want and yet they still don't have to worry about the paparazzi follow-
ing them while they surf.
  "Being able to sustain a career is really
tough these days," says Butch Vig, Nevermind producer and Garbage drummer.
"One needs to maintain a healthy dose of
humor and self-deprecation, and Dave definitely has both."
  Plus, past dramas aside, the Foos seem
to enjoy what they do, particularly Grohl
and Hawkins, who have an easygoing,
Starsky & Hutch-like back-and-forth
between them.
  Grohl: "I'm like the uptight guy, and
you're like the 'No way, it's cool!' guy."
  Hawkins: "[Bad Religion's] Brian Baker
thinks it's homoerotic. He thinks we're
lovers."
  Grohl: "We're kind of like brothers."
  Hawkins: "Well, my real older brother's
a shithead. It's true!"
  What really gets the Foos gabbing,
though, is the wall-to-wall programming of
music-industry reality shows, and the
celeb-obsessed tabloids-which, of course,
they find completely despicable. Or at least
they claim to find despicable, for their
lunch breaks resemble an all-dude episode
of The View.
  "I wonder if Kevin Federline sucks
toes," Grohl muses, "because that might give him worms or something. Britney
was up in first class, and they made her
put her shoes back on because she was
stinking up the cabin."
  "Gnarly!" Hawkins barks.
  "How did she turn into a redneck trainwreck?" Shiflett asks.
  "Turn into it?" Grohl says "I bet all
along, when she was just a teenybopper,
she was out of control, just like sniiiffff!"
He runs his nose up the table, and then
makes a sound like the Tazmanian Devil
on a bender.
If Grohl takes himself less than seriously at times, it's because he shook off
most of the other late-30s bellyaches a few
years back. In 2003, he married Jordyn
Blum, 28, an MTV producer; they bought
a house in the Hills, and Jack Black danced
in the backyard at their wedding. He surrounds himself with friends and family
(his mother has come along on tours
before, helping out with the post-show barbecues), and when he's not playing, he's
actually only a few degrees cooler than
your dad.
  "I'm a bowler, I'm a skeet-shooter," he
says. "Time off is spent making up for all
the things you missed while working, whether that's going to Home Depot, or
Bed, Barf and Beyond, or a night of drink-
ing with people you haven't seen in a long
time. Typical bullshit."
  It's taken a while for Grohl to get this
settled. "I always looked at every song or
every paycheck or every tour or every
album as the last one," he says. "When I
was 14, I thought I would die before I
reached 16, because that's when you get
your driver's license; when I was 16, I
thought I'd never live to be 18, because
that's when people start drinking. I've
always had some sort of fatalistic outlook.
And only in the past few years have I real-
ly been able to imagine growing old and
imagine making music forever. At some
point you just realize you're a lifer."
  Last year, after lengthy out-of-court disputes between himself and Courtney Love,
the long-gestating Nirvana box set was
finally released. When it comes to ever
working with Love again, in any capacity,
Grohl is diplomatic. "Well, I don't have
to," he says. "This little world that we've
created here is such a good place, such a fucking healthy loving family, and that's
where I'd like ~ be. The Nirvana thing
never ends, and when they need me to be
there, I'll be there.
  "I watched Singles the other day," he
goes on, reminiscing about Cameron
Crowe's 1991 Seattle-set dramedy. "It was
just funny for me. Maybe instead of going
to the Viper Room to see [hair-metal tribute artists] Metal Shop, it's time to see the
grunge guys. See someone with a big soul
patch and long johns and Doc Martens.
It's so dated, it's so funny. [But] I can still
listen to those bands and enjoy them.
There's so many great bands from '91 or
'92, but it's the rearview mirror."
  Grohl stops himself, worrying he's
sounding too much like a fuddy-duddy
who's sadly pining for the past. "It's just
like any old, fat, bald ex-football players
who spent years in a fraternity fucking
chicks on a field," he says. "'Those were
the days!'"
  A pause.
  "Oh, man," 'Hawkins moans. "Why
didn't I go to college?"