Drinking in the Free World

Rip It Up, Issue 247, 1 March 1998, Page 16

Drinking in the Free World

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: OIT the afternoon of the Foo Fighters’ | E % Auckland concert, there’s a media i ' circus underway at the City Life apartment ! I complex, situated just off Queen Street. In : i the lobby, interviewers from bFM, Havoc, : . Lava, and Ice TV are milling around waiting | i for the band to make an appearance. In fact, E | bassist Nate Mendel (who braved an early : | morning surf at Piha) is already present, : . sitting at a corner table, reading the : E newspaper and going unrecognised. Guitarist i ' Franz Stahl steps out of the lift, and behind | . him drummer Taylor Hawkins appears, : . looking extremely dazed. He has dark shades | ion and a red baseball cap pulled down low. E ' Spotting Mendel, Hawkins wanders over. : | “Hey Nate, have you seen Dave today? He ' . was the drunkest I've ever seen him last } i night.” E ! As if on cue, Grohl arrives, and he’s not : ' looking too great. The evening before, half of ! . the Foo Fighters were out on the town : . celebrating. Hawkins had turned 26, and i i after a band dinner at a Ponsonby restaurant, E ' he and Grohl stayed up, drinking and playing ! | pool in a Queen Street bar until five this ] . morning. With a big sigh, Hawkins sinks into | i a leather chair, tugs his cap down further, E | groans, and lights a cigarette. Right now, he ! | is seriously hungover. ; } j “It was a big night, we were just raging, | | we were out partying, it was incredibly loose. | i I don’t go out every night, but every couple E ' of nights we go out and have some drinks, : | especially after shows, sometimes we have to | . unwind a little bit. I don’t remember much of | i last night [laughter].” E | As a kid, Hawkins grew up in Laguna : . Beach, a small surfing community in : . California. Encouraged by his next door : i neighbour, and much to his father’s E ' annoyance, Hawkins took up drumming : ' shortly after turning 10. : :

TR Auckiand Town Hall

“My father felt it was a big waste of time. E Instead of doing my homework I wanted to | play drums. Now, he laughs about it, now he | thinks it’s amazing that I get to do what I i wanna do.” : By his early 20s, Hawkins had played : drums in a succession of failed bands in Los | Angeles, then one day he “fluked” a meeting ' with the manager of an as-yet unknown E singer, Alanis Morissette. : “I just happened to be in the right place at | the right time, and I met Alanis’s manager. : Alanis had put [Jagged Little Pill] together i already, and she was looking for a drummer | to do a tour —it wasn’t a big deal cause the | album wasn’t out yet — and that was really cool, she let us do what ever we wanted to do E musically, and it was fun. Then it blew up ! from there.” : While Hawkins was a member of her : backing band, Morissette toured the world ; and gained superstardom, selling over 24 : million albums. Describing himself as an : observer, Hawkins says he was stunned by : the Alanis phenomenon. : i “It was really weird, it was unbelievable to ! watch. It was like being on the outside : looking in ’cause it wasn’t my band, [ was : still just part of the mechanisms. It was scary E watching something grow like that, I don’t ] think I ever want to be part of something that ! huge again. We were a good live band and as | a musician [ felt like I grew a lot, but in the E end [ wanted to move onto something that ] was more what I was into, and something : that I could more be a part of. I think if it got | to a point where I had to become a ‘hired : gun’ again, I’d rather play in a local band in i town and deliver pizzas.” : The Foo Fighters first met Hawkins on 3 tour in Europe, where Grohl and co. shared | the same bill as Morissette at several outdoor E festivals. When the Foo’s original drummer !

William Goldsmith quit the band, Hawkins joined up. Immediately he loved the camaraderie of being part of a gang. “Playing in this band is totally different from being someonc clse’s drummer. [ don’t work for Dave and | don’t work for the Foo Fighters, I'm in the Foo Fighters. I can tell Dave to fuck off if I want to, that’s the difference. There comes a bit more responsibility with that, but 'm not just picking up a cheque at the end of the week for my job. This is less a job and more of a band, which is why I wanted to join in the first place. It’s definitely more my trip to be doing this, and I’'m happy with the level we're at, I don’t want theband to get any bigger.™ : To his'&frprise, Hawkins made an casy gransition into the band. Old school punk rockers were obviously not too precious about Alanis Morissette’s drummer hanging out with Dave Grohl. “I thought I would get more grief, but I think people realised that I wasn’t necessarily from that scene, that Pm just a drummer. | think that once they saw us play, that other stuff got thrown by the wayside. I can play the stuff and that’s what's really important.” Holding his heads in his hands, Hawkins sdys he needs to retreat to his room and nab a few more hours sleep before soundcheck! He apologies if he’s “incoherent today™ and gets up to leave. You feel like shit, and you've got to play a gig tonight. How does that feel? “It’s fucked! [Laughter| I'm fucked! But I'll get through it, I've done it many times. You just wake up for the show, and get it together for it. I€ll be okay, we’ll rock,” he says with a grin. A shrill Sustained scream greets the Foos as the house lights go down at the Auckland Town Hall. They burst on again to reveal Hawkins and Grohl seated behind drumkits, bashing their way through a spastic wigout that segues into a solidly raucous version of ‘Monkey Wrench’. Up the back, Hawkins is all flailing limbs and flying blonde hair, while Grohl, now front and centre and armed with a guitar, looks pained as he musters up some vocal power. Four songs in, he steps to the mic and announces: “I am thoroughly, 1000 per cent hungover.” £ R R that the Foo Fighters perform this evening; an even mix of EL DAY el T e ete RR AT o Beenie’, ‘My Poor Brain’, and “This is a Call’, and singalong pop/punk tunes such as ‘Big Me’, ‘For All The Cows’, ‘l'll Stick Around’, ‘Alone + Easy Target’, and an especially memorable, uplifting take on ‘Everlong’. “I feel like shit,” says Grohl after stepping down from his kit after a second drum dual with Hawkins. : Tonight the Foos were good, but not ’ great. Despite knocking out a powerful version of Killing Joke’s ‘Requiem’, they lacked the endurance required to totally pull this one off. Needless to say, the Foo Fighters had an early night, in preparation for their big day in Wellington. ' . In the capital city, the band and crew are staying at the Plaza International Hotel, several minutes walk away from the Town Hall where they’ll play tonight. At two in the afternoon, there’s already a bunch of excited kids waiting outside the main door of the venue, clutching Foo Fighters’ albums and posters. Looking considerably more healthy than he was 24 hours ago, Grohl exits the elevator at the Plaza foyer, and takes a seat in a quiet corner of the room. He’s tall, skinny, and gangly, and as every single interview he conducts reports, a really nice guy. As he gets settled, Grohl good naturedly disputes Hawkins day-old evaluation of his state of inebriation. “I think that’s probably the first time I’ve ever been drunker than Taylor, that’s what he meant to say. But yeah, we had a big night on his birthday, so the Auckland show was an uphill battle.” I was a little disappointed that you PERebalt play ‘My Hero’. “Yeah, sometimes we do it, sometimes we don’t, it depends on how the show’s been or how we feel. More often than not we’ll leave it out of the set. To be perfectly honest, one of the reasons why we don’t play it, drumming wise, it’s pretty taxing, so if

Taylor’s had a really difficult show he won't want to do it, and if I've had a really difficult show then I don’t want to do it because | have to do the drums first, then I jump down to the guitar. So, that song’s really hit or miss.” When you were a kid, did you ever meet/people that you looked up to, and (FeXel o icicol Ul G oY ek “Not really. I can’t think of many famous people I considered heroes when I was a little kid. I really liked the Six'Million Dollar Man and I really liked Steve' Martin, but I don’t know if I'd consider them heroes. My idea of a hero, and what the basic idea of the song is, is that heroes are ordinary people that don’t necessarily receive mass adulation and attention. Family members, friends of the family, friends of mine, people that travel with us, they’re people that I consider heroes just because they’re really grounded, strong, responsible, and respectable people. . “It’s weird because we sometimes get the chance to meet these famous musicians who we've always really looked up to — and I don’t think I've ever been let down by meeting someone — but when you jneet someone it definitely takes the mystique away from them. And I think that’s a good thing, because even the movie stars, or the sports stars, or the TV stars, or the rock stars that a lot of kids consider heroes, everyone is just an ordinary, average human being. The concept of a hero is just kind of weird.” Do you still find it difficult to cope when you ‘re treated as celebrity, and not another human being? “Sure, but I can understand it, because when [ was a kid, if I walked up on the street to someone that I’'d seen on TV, there’d be this initial shock. But when people freak out, the first thing I do is tell them to fuckin’ relax, because after awhile it gets to be annoying. [ don’t blame anyone for not knowing any better, and I know that sounds awful, but I don’t wanna be someone that everybody really looks up to, I just wanna make music, and [ want people to come to ‘ shows and jump around. And 'm sure that 75 per cent of the people that come to our | shows are more responsible and smarter, and | more well adjusted and twice the person that I am, so why the fuck should anyone look up ! to me. I’'m just supposed to be the soundtrack | to their evening.” 3, Do you resent that rock star/hero worship thing that record companies seek to create? ' “I don’t resent it, but it’s annoying when | yoy have a human being and they become treated as a product, and in order to 3 capitalise on a product like that you have to ! fully exploit it, and in doing that you create | this cult of personality. But, I also believe that . if you do something like this you’re asking I for it. If you don’t want to be approached on ! the street and have people say they love your | band, or they love your movies, or they love your football team, then don’t do it. There E are days when I’'m fed up with it, and I think, ' I wanna go home to Virginia, [ wanna bya | farm and hang out with my family, and learn to fly planes, and that’s it, that’s all wanna do. And on those days, someone will ask, ‘do you wanna do this show called Hey! Hey! It’s | Saturday, it’s the biggest TV show in ‘ Australia, great exposure, you’ll sell f thousands of records,” and I'll say, ‘no, fuck it, I don’t wanna do it.” Then there are other | days when you’re sitting at home and you i hear that Tony lommi [Black Sabbath| wants E you to go in the studio with him, well ‘fuck yeah!” The more you give into something like | this, the more it’s gonna come round and bite | you in the ass. I don’t wanna seem like I'm E coming off as the reluctant rock musician { who doesn’t feel happy with success, it’s { awesome, it’s great, it’s just the type of fi adulation that comes with it seems a little E weird.” \ : ! Taylor said the Foo Fighters are as big and successiul as he wants the t band to be. Do you feel the same way? i “I think that Taylor knows because he E played with Alanis Morissette. He knows { what it can be like touring in stadiums that | hold 10, 15, 20,000 people, with the biggest . female artist of all time, and standing on the E sidelines and watching what’s going on with !

this person/and theirlife,’and how; this hasfi Nirvanal it wasn i that bigbut it was| [~ eI L wplrstrlhnpldrj’ orally entirel oo large attimes Some nights \henweire on tour witb the Foo Fighidgs, 1 Sa t R e T SR R COPAIT R NI O’ R ] . to make it seem intimate. So imagine with - - . Nirvana, play a A . in: 40,000 g T R ima tiv 2 L L SR L AVEE TR i - powerful, but with the Foo Fighters, getting - e RNy Y LI3 ur el 4 1 S )it 0i i : e D i 0 000 tr . 1t ! Wg’ Fo ]]yre 12 2 :P,Mi PBl 1 | 5 e} Btt 7 ' ro 0 7 na_’s ER 5 e | to.rva s s wis ee 3un o u | Because youve been there and done , Nop wi ; h Nl rvana H _have you attempt ed I :pe 2 ful, irVOu na{ ht Iwaban = le | to keep the Foo Fighters under control. : tow, 2SI rirvo ooL eopxa &y 5 D blga“ I"F°:> iek : poleth . “Yeah, but there’s no real way to control' e dOA RR l | “either do it or.you don’t do it, people either, | (22! g t o]l oh dc.)kel s ur’d to Lol | like.it or.they don’t like it. A good example is . Pearl Jam. They don’t do interviews, they ' don’t do videos, they rarely tour, they do . :l i i faeeplm T e geverything that,would kecp from e s | selling records, but they still manage to sell* ¢ | millions of records because people love their i music. I just look at it realistically. The kind - ; & I GRS IVAT I S : dO [‘yt reC?reC Ok S ngir Wio ll nd ,but o) on a mass scale. Little girls don’t wanna .- | scream along to ‘Monkey Wrench’,old = ~ : Se-llio I]uenlle ‘MO’tW'Ck muießCa nd i working woman don’t want to listento. i mus S Nto do’ll 9e £ t = PRE IR RN A immel 8 a ¥ . h | -just don’t.-We play pop/rock music, but = - E nam VVOaCe laymenuld]jke Eveans,t | there’s different elements; ‘Weenie Beenie’ off S FRCEibE ERE RRO g O SR LR | that’s fuckin’ jangly indie shit. Even the. 4 ost that come to our shows, I can see - - | which kids like which songs, and I -~ SRR CTHCERIERE (S %Vhemeat | Taero scumed 10 b s real good chenistry. F et?s fuha‘tlike be tbe Zsp ltighen' 2t s \' on stage last night, despite the hangovers? | oasl ORTR I A TSR R | W S 5 gns el | as'a unit, than we ever have been. When we started the band, Nate, William, Pat [Smear], i k stahge bhaln S 8 Vingthe ed o v \ and I, we were having fun, and it:was great. io) 3 It, b da to Toha I 1l oTS re. e(5 i t : 7 udt e o wha] T AT Loy e ! ta IJ esd’ nlf: : Snd i ite raha 2STSeIRN TR T B VA TR G : \X/erefirSt an PRI el RN SRI Ae(X U ; tha ye i Els | thatyear and a half, I think that everybody, - i |

was tired, and everyone got pretty run down. BTSRRI oY h{the studio very soon after stopping that tour, I think everybody wanted a break but there wasn’t much time. William wasn't prepared, he had a bad time in the studio, and at the end of the first recording, after a month and half in Seattle, we decided we had to do it again, so William split. So, we got Taylor, and he was this breath of fresh air, he’s so funny\, he’s so enthusiastic, he’s so perfect for this band, there’s no other drummer in the world there could be. He joined, and immediately made things 10 tmes better, and then three days before our first tour, Pat decides he wants to quit. He thought we should be a three piece, and no way did I wanna be in another three piece,/I ad enough of those.” ring your bFM interview yesterday, $u hinted that Pat leit under a cloud. * “Well, there are things that people need tc know and there are things that people don’t need to know. What Pat told us, the reason why he quit the band, was he was over it, he wanted to do other things, he didn’t like touring, he didn’t like flying, he wasn’t excited about playing anymore. He said that he was thinking about quitting even before we started recording this record. I begged him to stay, I thought 1t would be 4 bad thing for him to go, we were about to do something great, the album was great and he loved the album too, but he just said he didn’t want to do It. But he saidshe would stick around and do the couple ‘of tours we had booked until Franz was available. I knew right off the bat that Franz [who played with Grohl in his pre-Nirvana band, Scream| was going to be the one to do it, he’s an'old friend. As Pat stuck around, and the more touring we did, the more he just hated it, it was awful. Those are the worst shows we’ve ever done, and I think it’s why we’re the¢ best band we’ve ever been right now. We’d gg on stage, and Pat didn’t care, and it would sound bad and people knew it. By the time h left he was entirely unhappy, and I've said in probably every interview I've ever done, that it was an amicable split... and in a lot of ways it was, but it also had a lot to do with things outside of the band. Like my marriage broke up, that had a lot to do with why Pat fe[HiTeoN In what sense? “In just a sense that I don’t even wanna talk about, but that had a lot to do with it as we 11... let’s just say that I don’t talk to either my wife or Pat anymore.” Is it inevitable that a personal relationship will suffer if one half of the partnership is in a touring rock band “Personal relationships always suffer, a relationship is what you make of it. If you make a relationship priority number one, then you’ll probably be okay. Right now, my priority number one is my relationship with the band... actually family is number one, th band is number two. But yeah... imagine being away from someone that you love and miss, on and off, for a year and a half, it’s bad, it’s really difficult. I've resigned to the idea that I will never be able to pull off a conventional relationship until I have finishe doing this band.” By surrounding yourself on the road with old friends, does that give you a I3RS security? ' “I've always thought it was really important, even throughout the whole Nirvana thing, to keep yourself surrounded by people that you’ve known for years, because if you ever start getting out of line, those are the people that are going to slap you back into place. And if you’re standing on stage and you feel so incredibly out of place, and so little, and far away from home. you can look to the side of the stage and see your best friend Jimmy, or Pete, or turn to your left and see Franz, and that really keeps everything in perspective. Most of the people that work with the band come from Nirvana days; the monitor guy, lan, is the first monitor person I ever worked with, and Craig our soundman, he was Nirvana’s soundman. Mike, our lighting guy, he did Nirvana stuff. So, you kind of have this little family to keep it together, and as much as it’ a travelling circus, you also rely on each other when you’re so far away from home.”