Watch the Throne: Dave Grohl on How the Foos Saved Their Summer
How did it feel when that gig was done?
We thought, “We can stay on tour. This is gonna work. This is gonna be good.” But then, like, I come up with this stupid idea: “Let’s make a T-shirt out of the X-ray of my broken leg.” So now I sit on that throne and look at, like, 25,000 people with my fucking X-ray on their chest. It’s really weird.
What’s it like to play in the throne? What do you do when you feel like you want to run around?
Every show is a little bit different in that thing. First of all, I’m breaking guitar picks and dropping shit. I asked my guitar tech the other day, “Why am I losing all my guitar picks?” He said, “Because you’re playing your guitar harder than you’ve ever played it in your life.” I’ve got my leg up on that thing but the rest of my body, it’s like I’m fucking Joe Cocker up there. It’s insane. There’s a seatbelt to keep me in it so I don’t fucking fall out.
It sounds like you’ve adjusted well.
I’m kind of going nuts, and I love it. I love running around a stadium on two feet, getting a crowd to fucking sing along with me, but I also love closing my eyes in that chair and fucking going off. It’s fun, man, honestly. And the shows are longer, because I’m just sitting there and I scream for three fucking hours and then I lose my voice. It’s like the transfer of pain.
I’m like an old car at this point: Once you fix the carburetor, your fucking fan belt goes out. Once you fucking fix that, your fucking gas line ruptures. I’ve got an old car, and I know what it’s like to fix that thing once a fucking week. And I’m starting to feel like one.
The way you talk about the shows, though, it sounds like you’re having fun anyway.
We’ve established this connection with our fans over the last 20 years, and we know each other. I look out there and I see them, they look up and they see me, and I think we feel like we’re all in it together and have been for a long time. The way I look at it is, I’m sharing this otherwise shitty experience with them and turning it into something beautiful or magical, like, “Let’s make it all better together.” And, you know, it could be worse. It could’ve been a lot worse — I mean, I fucked it up bad but it could’ve been a lot worse. It gives the gig this whole new energy, this whole new vibe. It loosens it up. It makes it seem real. And that’s what I like. So it’s been OK.