Foo Fighters: Back and Forth

We must adjust to changing times...

...execute the office of President of the United States...

I challenge a new generation of young Americans...

My biggest fantasy when I was a kid

was that I would go to see my favorite band play,

and someone would come out and say,

"Sorry, the band can't play tonight, their drummer broke his fuckin' leg.

"Unless there's someone that knows all the songs..."

Then, of course, I would jump up and be the greatest drummer in the world.

I fantasized about that.

With Nirvana, the process of making the music

was so entirely simple and pure and real.

Kurt was a great lyricist, he had a beautiful voice,

and he wrote really simple songs.

There were things I learned about songwriting from being in a band with Kurt

that I don't think anyone else could have taught me.

That record, Nevermind, came out

almost a year to the day after I had joined the band.

This song is called Smells Like Tieen Spirit.

Before Dave had joined the band,

there was a message on my answering machine from Kurt, saying,

"Butch! We have the best drummer in the world! He's the greatest drummer in the world.

"I'm not kidding you. He's awesome, dude!" And he hung up.

About a week later we were in LA and I walked into a rehearsal space with him.

And Dave walked up - skinny, long hair...

"Hey, man, I'm Dave. Nice to meet you." He was just full of energy.

I was like, "Let's play. Play me some songs, you guys."

And they played Tieen Spirit.

Dave did the...

...and it just floored me.

Of course, everybody was telling the band

that they thought we were great,

but I don't think the three of us ever believed

a word of anything anyone was telling us.

We never thought we were gonna sell a million records.

None of us had any idea that it was gonna completely change my life and their lives.

But I knew that they sounded really tight and pretty focused,

and that they had written some amazingly powerful songs.

We knew something was happening

because the atmosphere of the gigs just changed.

They went from being cool, hipster, underground people in a club

to, like... jocks were coming to the show.

That was the first thing, like,

"Oh my God, there's jocks here," you know?

"That's kind of strange. They like our music?

"You used to kick my fucking ass for listening to this music."

I was a really big fan of Nirvana, like everybody else,

and I happened to be reading an interview with Kurt

where he had mentioned,

Nirvana was always meant to be a four-piece, a two-guitar band.

It was never meant to be a three-piece. I thought, "Oh, well that's my in."

Pat is from this legendary punk rock band called the Germs

that we all grew up listening to.

There was no one more badass than the Germs.

Germs didn't give a fuck.

So Pat shows up in Seattle, and all of us were just like,

"Oh my God, hey, it's Pat Smear from the Germs.

"He's alive?"

So now Nirvana is hitting the big halls,

with guitarist Pat Smear helping to make the loud louder.

The day before the first rehearsal I saw my picture on MTiV News, saying,

"Nirvana has a new guitar player, Pat Smear."

I was like, "My God, it's real! There it is!"

I don't think Kurt wanted to be a huge fuckin' rock star.

And I don't think he could handle how complicated it had all become.

No one was very happy with the tour, or the band.

So Kurt decided he wants a break,

even though we're on this tour you can't get out of,

because you're a big band and you get sued.

We had, like, a week and a half off in between two legs of the tour.

I decided to fly home.

And Kurt went to Rome, where he was meeting Courtney Love, his wife.

Hi, I'm Tiabitha Soren, with MTiV News.

Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain

was hospitalized in a coma in Rome, Italy on Friday morning...

I turn on the TiV, and Kurt was being wheeled away in an ambulance in Rome.

I went to the hospital with him, and I didn't know what to do, because I thought,

"Do I say, this is Kurt Cobain, take care of him right away, VIP,"

or do I say, "This is just some guy, don't call the press"?

I finally went with, "This is Kurt Cobain, VIP. Do something about it."

Nirvana spokespeople reported encouraging signs,

saying they've been told Kurt Cobain was responding to his name,

opening his eyes, and squeezing his wife's hand.

When he came home, I remember talking to him on the phone,

and saying, "Hey man, I don't want you to die, OK?"

And he was very apologetic, "No, I'm sorry, it was a big mistake.

"I took these pills, I was drinking this champagne and I was in Rome...

"It was, just a... just made a mistake."

It was really sad. I had a message from Kurt, but I wasn't home.

And so whatever help he needed from me, I couldn't help him.

And that was the last time I ever talked to him or saw him.

When I found out that he had killed himself...

I was kind of numb.

I knew that it...

He was gone, but I didn't know how to feel.

Kurt Cobain, a sweet and gifted man, dead at the age of 27.

Tio Courtney Love, one-year-old Frances Bean Cobain,

Dave Grohl, Kris Novoselic and Pat Smear, our deepest sympathies.

Everybody knew Kurt was in a bad way,

but that's something you never expect to happen.

When someone is that down and out

you still can't comprehend that they're actually gonna commit suicide.

It was terrible.

After Kurt died, I didn't wanna play music. I didn't wanna play the drums.

When Kurt died, it wasn't just that my friend died.

It was my whole life kinda died around it and with him, you know?

And I quit the music business.

At some point, I was finally motivated.

"I'm gonna get myself out of this funk I've been in for the last eight months."

Or whatever it was, you know?

I decided that I was gonna take my favorite songs

that I'd written over the last four or five years that no one had heard...

and I was going to record them...

...at a 24-track studio down the street from my house.

And it was really exciting, because I was doing it totally by myself.

I didn't know why I was doing it. I just wanted to do something, you know?

So I booked a week at the studio,

and at the end of the week, I had a cassette, and it sounded good.

And I started thinking, "I won't put my name on it.

"People will imagine it's just a band.

"They won't know it's the guy from Nirvana."

In the middle of that session, I get a call at the studio

that Tiom Petty wants me to come play drums for him on Saturday Night Live.

I just thought, "Oh my God, he's a hero of mine."

And I had the opportunity to join the band if I wanted to join the band.

I really had to kind of choose.

Was I going to play drums with Tiom Petty, or was I gonna start over from scratch

and be the lead singer and guitar player of a band,

do something I'd never done before, that I was terrified doing?

Believe me, it was not easy to tell Tiom Petty

that I wasn't going to be his drummer.

It was not an easy decision to make.

I can still see my hand just putting the phone down,

and thinking, "OK, let's see what happens."

There was a band in Seattle called Sunny Day Real Estate.

And a good friend of mine told me

that Sunny Day Real Estate were playing a show,

and it was gonna be their last show because they were breaking up.

My band was falling apart

about the same time that Dave found himself without a band.

We were broken up while we were doing the tour.

We decided we weren't gonna do it anymore,

but had already booked this tour, so we were like,

"This will be the last thing we do."

It was ironic because that was the first tour that we were playing shows

where people were actually showing up. We were like, "Oh, well!"

I went to the show to see them play,

knowing it was probably the last time anyone was gonna see them play.

And I was watching them thinking, "That's a really good rhythm section."

I gave them the cassette, thinking,

"Hey, check it out. Maybe we could jam sometime."

Dave was the first famous person I'd ever met.

He was just out of Nirvana, you know, like, that was a very big deal.

I remember the first time that Nate and William and I got together to jam.

It was over at William's parents' house.

I remember going up to William's parents' kitchen

and sitting there after we played,

and Dave just goes, "You guys wanna be in the band?"

And I was like, "Hell yeah!"

Playing in front of people was very difficult for me.

I did have a conversation with Dave

and I said, "I don't think that I should do it."

Dave said, "That's exactly why you're the guy that has to do it."

I don't know what that meant but that convinced me, I guess.

After that rehearsal, Dave brings up that he wants a second guitar player,

and thinks it should be Pat Smear,

who William and I knew from him having played in Nirvana and the Germs.

Then Dave came over, and he gave me a cassette.

I listened to that whole tape, just front to end,

and I thought it was all great.

I didn't have anything against Pat. I didn't know him as a musician or as a person.

But he lived in Los Angeles,

and I just thought that was fucking crazy.

The way I'd grown up, you were in a band with your friend from school

that you saw every day.

You'd go home after school and get together

at somebody's mom's house or basement and work it out.

You can't do that if the guy lives in Los Angeles.

Pat came up, we played, and he was perfect,

so I got over that "Him living in LA" thing.

I might have talked to him about trying to move to Seattle.

All of us came from bands that ended prematurely.

We didn't really talk about our former bands.

For me, it was always kind of a touchy subject.

At this point in time, Kurt had only been dead for a year,

and I didn't wanna talk about it.

So we all entered into this new band

like it was helping us get through the loss

of the bands we'd been in before.

I remember it really vividly,

Dave saying, like, "Let's have it be fun.

"Let's have things be out in the open.

"Let's talk about shit. Just no drama."

He was like, "I don't want it to be a stressful thing.

"We're not gonna tour into the ground." And...

Which I was glad about.

The first tour that we did,

was with a musician named Mike Watt.

He is a legendary punk rock bass player.

And he asked me if I would tour with him.