The Night I Met Dave Grohl

We’re waiting in line, and it’s early, but the line stretches way the hell out to the street anyway. It’s a sultry July evening, the kind where you should be wearing bathing trunks on your back porch, but I’m standing in line in jeans and my beat-up Docs anyway. It’s like a uniform, only an idiot would come to a rock show dressed in silly shorts. I don’t wear the chain wallet anymore though, the time for that is long gone. It’s 1997, and we’re waiting to see the Foo Fighters in a small Toronto nightclub. They aren’t really a big attraction yet, and we got our tickets for $20 a pop from scalpers. Seven bucks less than face value, that’s a good deal.

“Why do scalpers always get a better deal on tickets than regular people do?” Chris wonders. “They know they are going to be selling them illegally. I’m so sure.”

“Who cares. It means we don’t have to go to Ticketmaster or pay extra fees. If it wasn’t for scalpers, I wouldn’t be here,” I say. I wouldn’t. I’m too lazy to get on the horn and order tickets from Ticketmaster.

Chris lights up a smoke, and scuffs around on the sidewalk. “I hope the opening band is good,” he mutters. You can tell though, he doesn’t really care. He just wants in to see the Foo Fighters. We’re both excited about it. Dave Grohl will be here. He used to be in Nirvana, the best band in the world. We’re going to see like a truncated version of Nirvana up there. It won’t be the real thing, but still, Dave Grohl. His drumming is legendary. It sounds like angry gods having a tantrum, when he rolls on his tom-toms.

“I heard that Dave sometimes plays the drums onstage, just to prove he can still do it. They set up two kits, and Dave pounds the skins just like he did in Nirvana. I hope he does that,” Chris says. The sun is setting in his eyes, and he squints at the club. “It won’t be long now,” he says. He doesn’t know that though, he’s just talking to sort of reassure himself. Me, I figure we’ve got a ways to go yet.

All of a sudden, a car screeches up on the curb, right behind us. Chris kind of jumps, and I turn around to see what the hell is going on, because this guy could have run me down or something. He didn’t, of course, but I guess I’m just mad because he scared me. It’s a black Beemer, and the rear window rolls down. This guy with long hair pokes his head out at me.

“Hey!” he yells, and he waves his fist around. “Hey! Hello, kiddies! Hellooo! Ha ha ha! Over here, everybody!” He looks right at me, and gives me this crazy baboon grin.

A guy in the crowd screams, “It’s DAVE! He’s here!” It was. Dave Grohl was yelling at us from about two feet away from the back seat of his Beemer, and a crowd of people begin to push over to the car to talk to Dave.

He wouldn’t have any of it, though. He cackles again like a madman, and he turns his head to the driver: “Go, man! Go, go, go!” And then the car peels out, and he’s gone, and the car makes a left turn, away from the club. Where the hell is he going, anyway? I found out later he was going to an interview at Much Music.

“Wow! We met Dave Grohl! He was right there!” Chris says. His eyes are bugging out all over the place. “This show is going to be awesome!”

And it was. We booed the opening band off the stage after only three songs, by chanting, “We want the Foo! We want the Foo!” until they gave up and stopped playing. I felt sorry for them a bit, but not too much, because they were a really terrible band. And Dave, he played at least a half-dozen songs on his kit, and threw the drumsticks he broke into the crowd like religious artifacts.

It wasn’t Nirvana, but it was close enough.