"Houdini had nothing on [Prince]... the man was a fucking magician"
Dave Grohl has vividly recalled the time he was asked by Prince to jam with him and his band back in 2011, fulfilling the Foo Fighters frontman’s “rock’n’roll fantasy” in the process.
Grohl recalled the entertaining tale on his newly launched Instagram account Dave’s True Stories, which is aiming to keep people entertained during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic with stories from Grohl’s past.
Posting on the account earlier today (April 7), Grohl recalled the time that he was invited to play with Prince and his band at soundcheck during the late artist’s 21-date run at the LA Forum in 2011.
After declining the opportunity to join Prince during one of the LA Forum gigs (because “I was fuuuuuuuuucking hammered” and there was “NO WAY I was going to step onto Prince’s stage in that state”), Grohl was subsequently invited to join Prince at a pre-show soundcheck the following week.
“It was a proposition I had wished for my entire adult life,” Grohl wrote about the invitation. “But never in my wildest dreams imagined possible. Jam. With. Prince. Absolutely unfathomable.”
After briefly recalling the first time he ever saw Prince perform live (“Houdini had nothing on this guy… the man was a fucking magician”), Grohl said he remained primed all week after the invitation to receive a call from Prince: “No fucking way in hell I was gonna miss a call from Prince.”
Eventually the day of the soundcheck rolled around and, despite not receiving a call from Prince beforehand, Grohl made his way to the LA Forum.
After making his way onto the empty stage, Prince, according to Grohl, simply “appeared”: “This is no exaggeration, folks. I swear the dude moved like a Navy SEAL. He just… materialised.”
Prince then invited Grohl to play drums with his band, so the former Nirvana drummer “started playing a groove, nothing fancy, but digging in to find my bearings on this behemoth wall of drums” supplied by Prince’s drummer.
“Prince watched, inspecting me with a grin,” Grohl continued. “He motioned to his bass player to hand over the instrument… strapped it on, and proceeded to decimate the damn thing with the smoothest, funkiest, fastest, most graceful playing I have ever seen to this day.”
“A moment divine,” Grohl described the experience — adding that there was “not a soul in sight to witness it” as it took place during soundcheck.
Grohl said that Prince then “grabbed his signature guitar and started playing the opening riff to ‘Whole Lotta Love’.”
“Let me tell you, folks: I don’t have arms full of [Led] Zeppelin tattoos for nothing. This was the universe folding into itself right before my eyes!!! Prince was gleefully tearing open my rib cage and diving into my motherfucking soul, y’all!”
Grohl concluded that this experience was “my rock’n’roll fantasy was coming true.” And while he never shared a stage with Prince during one of the latter’s shows, Grohl said that he “had fulfilled a life dream, with no evidence of it to share with anyone other than a memory that will stay with me forever.”
Back in January, Grohl took part in the Prince tribute concert ‘Let’s Go Crazy: A Grammys Salute To Prince’.
The post Dave Grohl recalls the time Prince invited him to jam and fulfilled his “rock’n’roll fantasy” appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.
