THE TAO OF

“When you have a clear-cut leader, especially one who’s not a dick, it just makes things easier. We’re not going to sit around and squabble for three days like little fucking high school chicks over a T-shirt design or a lyric or a tempo to a song. At the end of the day, Dave can say, ‘Hey, this is it.’ And it kind of keeps the peace, because when it comes to making art, there aren’t many democracies.”

So sayeth the Hawk, who, in addition to being the Undisputed Silliest Foo,
is also the most candid.

Fresh from a ferocious rehearsal session for the VMAs, Hawkins is now ferociously attacking a chicken quesadilla and a mound of guacamole and holding forth on the Benign Dictatorship of Dave. “Everybody here is rich because of Dave, and he cuts people in on an artistic level, too. If I was just sitting there, with Dave saying, ‘ This is exactly the drum part you’re playing,’ I would bail.”

Shiflett agrees: “It’s annoying when you have everyone going, ‘Come on,
dudes, do mine!’ That’s exactly what breaks bands up.”
And if they feel the need to write their own songs or play frontman? Hey,
that’s what side projects (like Taylor Hawkins & the Coattail Riders, Shiflett’s
Jackson United, and Mendel’s the Fire Theft) are for.
DEMOCRACY IS
OVERRATED

As he approaches elder-statesman status, Grohl stops short of considering himself a mentor to younger bands. He prefers to think of himself as a friend—with benefits. Upon first hearing My Morning Jacket, for example, he invited them out on tour, captivated by their Flying V’s and their flying locks. “I wanna see a band go up there and bleed beer. I wanna see a band that isn’t perfect, that doesn’t sound like the album. Those are the bands I’m sticking up for,” he says, four days after the VMAs. “It’s disconcerting when you see someone who’s supposed to be considered an artist lip-synch a routine in a bikini. That’s not music. I don’t know what the fuck that is.”

And so Grohl remains (without exactly meaning to be) perpetually on the lookout for fresh beerlike blood. “There’s a band here right now in the [606] studio from Detroit,” he tells me excitedly. “They’ve been recording for the past two days—and it sounds amazing, so I just asked them to come out on our fall tour.” He pauses for a moment and then adds, under his breath, “I gotta get their fucking name.”

SHARE YOUR
BLESSINGS WITH
THOSE IN NEED

“I was pretty upset he left,” Grohl admits, recalling Smear’s departure just after the release of 1997’s The Colour and the Shape. “I’d been through a lot with this guy.” A few years ago, though, the pair “got together and laughed and apologized and told each other we loved each other.” When it came time to recruit a third guitarist for last year’s Afoostic tour, Grohl figured, “rather than just get some Rolodex rocker, why not get someone who knows what it’s like to be a Foo Fighter? I wanted the dynamic that we have when we play and when we just hang out together. It felt like a much bigger family. I remember seeing a Dead Can Dance gig and how cool it was that there were all these people onstage. Sometimes they played and sometimes they didn’t. It seemed so musical, like a twisted orchestra. That’s what I wanted to accomplish.”

GOOCH IS AN
AWESOME WORD
“Gimme bones!” Grohl says. He’s
kneeling beside his daughter on the
patio, holding out his fist. “Gimme
bones!”
Violet, however, is busily splash-
ing in a contraption called a water
table, which amounts to a tiny, artificial pond for babies.
“Come on,” Grohl pleads. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
With an air of obligation, Violet holds up her chubby fistlet and allows her
father to bump knuckles.
“Bones!” Grohl cries. “Boooooones!”
“Bo,” Violet murmurs.
She is, as Grohl has mentioned a few times now, a striking child, with
enormous, ice-blue eyes that appear to have been directly transplanted from
her mother.
“Okay,” Grohl says. “This is the flip.” He carries her to the lawn and assumes
the position. “Baby in front of you, arm here, across the abdomen, other arm
around the back, holding the legs. Ready? One! Two! Three!”

Foos 1.0: Pat Smear, Grohl, drummer William Goldsmith, and Mendel

BE FOOTFUL
AND MULTIPLY

“Last night our keyboard player Rami [Jaffee] was about to split the band to go back to the Wallflowers,” Grohl tells me. We’re back out on his patio, watching the shadows stretch toward dusk. “I had to make that decision:

‘Rami, I want you in the band, and I don’t know if you know how it works
around here, but once you’re in, you’re in, so I don’t think you should go
anywhere, because we have a lot to look forward to.’ And so I got a text message
from him last night saying, ‘I’m all good, I’m in.’”
Does this mean Jaffee will be a full-fledged Foo?
“I hope so,” Grohl says. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

Specifically, what he’s trying to do is make the Foos an eight-piece band, one that includes Jaffee, violinist Jessy Greene, percussionist Drew Hester, and guitarist Pat Smear, who had performed with Nirvana and was the Foos’ original second guitarist (after Grohl himself, who played nearly all the instruments on their eponymous 1995 debut album).