The Foo Fighters Reveal Their Proudest Moments

Posted on Nov 9th 2009 4:00PM by Steve Baltin
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Dave Grohl has rolled with a lot of music's biggest stars, from Metallica to his current bandmates in Them Crooked Vultures, Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones and Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme. But he found himself in maybe the oddest company of his musical life recently. "I wound up hanging out with Barry Manilow, Kenny G and Johnny Mathis," Grohl tells Spinner. "I was like the sore thumb on the Mount Rushmore of soft jazz."

How did this unholy quartet of titans come to be? "I have a family friend who was getting a star on the Walk of Fame, Dave Koz, so I went out to show Dave some love," he says. The best part is Grohl got some approval from at least one of the acts. "I f---ing had Barry Manilow tell me he was a fan about two weeks ago. That was a 'what the f---?' moment," he adds.

In 15 years of rocking, the Foo Fighters have had quite a few of these "WTF" moments. So what are their favorites?
"Recording at Brian May's house, that was a big one," Grohl says.

"I remember when my dad called me -- he's like a hundred years old -- and said my name related to the Foo Fighters was a clue in the New York Times' crossword puzzle," bassist Nate Mendel recalls. "That's kind of a WTF moment."

Befitting their deserved status as the nicest band in rock, some of the Foos proudest moments involve their parents. In addition to Mendel's dad seeing his son in the NYT crossword puzzle, Grohl recently got a proud call from mom.

"My mom went back to Virginia recently and she's got this old blanket chest that's filled with Rolling Stone, Musician and Billboard magazines ever since like 'Nevermind' came out," Grohl says. "She was back there by herself recently going through all of these magazines and she said, 'The one thing that I thought in looking at all of those old Rolling Stone, Spin and Melody Maker [magazines] is I remember each one of those bands that were the biggest band in the world that year.' We played festivals with most of these bands that were the most enormous bands in the world and have since disappeared. And the fact that we're still hanging out 15 years later makes me pretty proud. I guess my mother felt proud as well. That's 'what the f---' like, really, we're the ones that f---ing weathered that bulls---?"

The Foo Fighters' 'Greatest Hits' is available now.