Dave Grohl is rarely sober when he hits the stage with the Foo Fighters thanks to his pre-show booze ritual.
The rocker admits he knocks back four beers and a handful of shots backstage as he waits to make his grand entrance with his bandmates.
Talking about his pre-show ritual on radio station KLOS-FM, Grohl said, “An hour before the gig, I have a Coors Light. About 50 minutes before the gig, I hit my first Jag (Jagermeister), finish the Coors Light, get another Coors Light going. Now there’s a bunch of people around, so I’m throwing shots at everybody and I’m taking shots with everyone in the room.
“The next Coors Light is down, I got a cold one. Now it’s about maybe 20 minutes before going on. I’ve had three or four shots of Jager and three Coors Lights. Then they sort of clear the room and we get 15 minutes to ourselves.”
He then paused and added, “This is bad! This is how I’ve spent every night of the last year and a half”, before admitting he also encourages his bandmates to drink with him.
“I feel guilty because I’m the only one who’s been doing the shots of the Jag, so I start feeding shots of Jag to the rest of the band, who are all drinking white wine and champagne and whatever,” he explained. “So I’m pounding them with Jag but I have to take them with them, so now I’m five or six shots in. And it’s like, ‘It’s time to walk to the stage’, so I crack another beer just to have a cold one as I walk up and I pick up the bottle and drink the last inch of the Jag!”
Grohl also revealed he’s a big fan of Jimmy Eat World bassist Rick Burch’s whiskey, adding, “He was trying to make biodiesel fuel. He was eventually like, ‘Screw this’, and used the same equipment to make booze… In his garage, he starts distilling his own stuff. When we were making that (2011) record Wasting Light…, he sends out a bottle of his own stuff. It was disgusting, like Southern Comfort on crack – thick, sweet, strong.”
Burch went on to perfect his whiskey and Grohl demanded a case.
“We actually built a rolling roadcase full of this dude’s bootleg hooch that he made in his garage with a biodiesel machine…,” he shared. “The drummer started puking blood, it got kinda weird, someone went blind. It was totally unsanctioned.”