Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters on music after Kurt Cobain

learn to fly has been a hit summer song for the Foo Fighters for almost 20 summers now not that they're long run has always been easygoing as Anthony Mason can tell us under the San Bernardino Sun last fall 30,000 fans came out for an old-school rock festival if rock-and-roll is supposed to be dead [Applause] [Music] Cal Jing was a resurrection [Applause] [Music] the headliners were America's biggest rock band the Foo Fighters whose 49 year old frontman Dave Grohl will go to any extreme to keep rocks flame burning I could just go you know in a stadium goes back case in point during a gig in Sweden two years ago role fell from the stage broke his leg and dislocated his ankle what did you guys think when that happened that there was gonna be a lot of time off but keyboardist Rami Joffe drummer Taylor Hawkins and the band kept going while Grohl was treated backstage until [Laughter] for two hours Grohl played from a chair while a medic tended his leg did they give you painkillers how did you do that now the adrenaline of yes but it really wasn't so the obligation like I broke it in the second song when I felt like all of these people had come all that way the tour was interrupted for Grohl surgery [Music] but he returned in a custom-built throne of his own design which was the star attraction last fall at the Cal Jam Museum attempt filled with memorabilia from the Foos nearly 25 year history including their Grammy collection they've won Best Rock Album four times and one best rock song this year from their latest album concrete and gold it's weird I mean what's weird about it well ages ago when I was a kid my dad said you know this is gonna last right save every check like it's the last one you're ever gonna make and every time we make a Foo Fighters record I think well if this were the last one then we had a good run would have been great you grew up here yeah Broll came up through the punk scene in Washington DC and its suburbs you know it's just a sleepy neighborhood that's my mother Virginia Virginia at 17 he dropped out of the high school where his mom taught English you were okay with that I was he just didn't like it and he was it was a really great writer and such a great spirit he said I'm going to Europe to tour with scream oh great yeah can I go too [Laughter] a few years later Grohl was invited to join an up-and-coming Seattle grunge band after its frontman Kurt Cobain called his act [Music] when most people think about nirvana they think about a video or a song on the radio but to me it was a really personal experience with some friends that went from sleeping on floors to then being the number one band on the charts and so this is my first ever platinum record with your mom's she got the first one like she was the first one to get it I mean still to this day whenever I see a new artist that's young that blows up and becomes gigantic overnight I kind of get worried for him I don't think anybody's cut out for it how did you do up there I was the kid with long hair in my face behind drums that look like washing machines and I could walk in the front door of a nirvana gig and not really get noticed so I didn't have to suffer a lot of the pressures that Kurt did is the frontman it was a four-year rocketship ride aboard what became one of the biggest bands in rock history at the height of it all in 1994 Cobain took his own life [Music] where are you right after Kurt dice just lost I went through a really dark period where I couldn't really even listen to the radio because it broke my heart just to hear music but quietly the 25 year old Grohl began to write and record songs of his own playing all the instruments I went to the cassette place down the street so could you make a hundred of these and made a little card to go in it yeah and I just started giving it out to people and I called it Foo Fighters because I wanted people to think it was a group he took the name from the military term for UFOs I mean I've always kind of been a UFO nut mm-hmm but I also its almost sounded like a gang you know I was like a karate gang or something so yeah it worked in 1995 those songs were released as the first Fu's album [Music] how would you describe the dynamic of this bed Dave's the leader and our job is the band is to make sure whatever in his head gets on the tape along the way he recruited Hawkins and Jaffe everybody's speechless Chris Shiflett on lead guitar Nate Mendel on bass and guitarist Pat smear who was a touring member of Nirvana as the Nirvana experience do you think informed Dave's approach to this band yeah I think it did a lot he was smart enough to pull out the good and say I'm gonna do things like this and look at the bad and say I'm not gonna do this kind of stuff have there been moments this band has been in trouble oh god yeah yeah 2001 that year Taylor Hawkins nearly died after a heroin overdose he spent two weeks in a coma and Grohl did not leave his side were you aware he was there every day yeah that was heavy time but he was always there and he's always been there mm-hmm that's when you forget about the band that doesn't matter anymore no that's when it that's when it gets real Dave Grohl himself gave up drugs when he was 20 it's one reason the Foo Fighters fight on when I tell people that I've never done cocaine in my life they they think I'm lying but I love music and I love life [Applause] and to me survival is the game that's the hardest part I just want to play music [Music]

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 3,738,998

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, On The Road, Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana

Id: G42mA04OWg4

Length: 8min 10sec (490 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 08 2018