Foo Fighters are releasing their brand new album, Your Favorite Toy, this Friday (April 24), which means frontman Dave Grohl has been busy doing interviews to promote it.
The 57-year-old rocker recently sat down with Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett of the Dish Podcast, where he was grilled about his culinary preferences - from childhood meals to how BBQ in America varies much like the music.
One of the more interesting things Grohl revealed with the two hosts was regarding his pre-show rituals, and how his elaborate combo of (lots of) beer, whiskey and Advil has helped not hurt his vocal cords.
“Maybe eight years ago, I had to go get my vocal cords checked out and I’d never done that,” he said. “And the [doctor] sticks the camera down into my throat… And he looks at my vocal cords and he goes, ’Wow, they look great.” And I said, ‘You’re kidding.’ He said, “No, they look amazing. Do you do vocal warm-ups?” I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ And he goes, ‘OK, do you do like vocal cooldowns after a show?’ I said, ‘No.’”
“And so he said, ‘Well, what do you do before a gig?’" he continued. "I said, ’Honestly? An hour before the show, I’ll open a beer and I’ll start drinking the beer. I might take an Advil because my knees hurt, my ankles hurt — whatever, I’m old. Then I’ll have a shot of whiskey. And then once the beer is done, I’ll open another beer. Then we’ll maybe have a group shot of whiskey, which we call ‘band prayer.’ Then someone will say ‘15 minutes’ and I open one more beer and have one more shot and then hit the stage.’ And my doctor said, ‘Just don’t change what you’re doing. It’s working.’ And I was like, ‘OK, great.’”
Grohl also discussed how he learned that hotel riders, not just backstage riders, were a thing.
"So apparently there's such a thing that artists, musicians have hotel riders," he said. "Apparently I've had one for the last 20 years and I had no clue! I thought everybody gets the cheese plate and the humidifier."
He continued, "And so we were on tour in Australia and the person who takes care of that stuff says, 'Yeah, that's your hotel rider.' I'm like, 'What does that mean?' And she's like, 'You can have anything you want in your hotel room.' I'm like, "Oh my god."
"And then I thought, 'You know what would be amazing? A hot plate. Like some sort of like portable kitchen so that I could on a day off can go to the market and buy all of the ingredients to come back to my room and cook my own dinner," he said. "And so the next morning she's like, 'What do you think?' And I'm like, 'Maybe like a Sterno stove and a hot plate.' And she's like, 'You can't do that.' And then I realized like, 'You know what? Yeah, I don't want to burn down the hotel with my band in it."
While he may not be able to cook in his hotel room, Grohl shared that one thing he does insist on during a tour is the band going out for dinner together.
"I'll tell you what we are big on is band dinners," he admitted. "We love to have dinner together and we do it on every almost every day off. Sometimes it's full band and crew, so it's 25 people. Sometimes it's maybe four or five of us. But it's one of our favourite things to do."
"Wherever we are, we find a good restaurant and we go and we sit down and we have a good bottle of wine and we have a dinner and then we go to sleep and get rest and the next day we rock the house," he added.
Watch the full episode below.