There’s a tribute to Lemmy on the new Foo Fighters album, and Dave Grohl wishes that his old friend was alive to hear it.
Speaking to the US edition of OK! magazine, Grohl revealed that the recently released No Son Of Mine is his homage to the much-missed Motörhead frontman, whose influence he has saluted on numerous occasions during his career.
No Son of Mine, the second single to be released from Medicine At Midnight, the Foo’s forthcoming tenth album, inverts the traditional notion of a strict father raising his child to worship God and fear sin.
"I wasn't raised with religion, I never went to church,” Grohl recently told Uncut magazine. “But I was sent to a Catholic school for two years as reform when I was a teenager. My religion was my record collection, I looked at those musicians as my saints and their songs as my hymns.”
Speaking to OK!, Grohl reveals that No Son Of Mine was initially written with “a country swing to it... but then we decided for something a bit more aggressive, and it turned into these chunky riffs.”
"I wish Lemmy were alive to hear it,” says Grohl, “because he would see how much an influence he's been to me."
Over the years, Grohl has been fulsome in his praise for Motörhead’s late leader, who he first met in a LA strip club, subsequently worked with on his Probot project, and later recruited for the memorable video for Foo Fighters’ single White Limo.
Speaking about Lemmy at the 2016 Grammy awards, Grohl said: “Many of us play rock 'n' roll but a rare few among us are rock 'n’ roll. Lemmy was rock'n'roll. He was a rebel, an outsider, one of a kind, and a way of life. He was Motörhead. He was a legend and I was proud to call him my friend.”
In the new issue of Classic Rock magazine, Grohl recalls a memorable morning spent drinking with Motörhead’s iconic leader at his LA apartment, listening to a new Motörhead album and Dudley Moore comedy cassettes.
“I was shocked at how fucking disgusting it was,” says Grohl, remembering Chez Lemmy. “These aisles of magazines and VHS tapes, stacked three to four feet high, Lemmy sitting on the couch, in his black bikini underwear with a spiderweb on them, after just dyeing his hair black, doing a phone interview, with a videogame on pause on the television.” When Lemmy’s interview concluded, he asked Grohl if he wanted a Jack Daniel’s. “It was fucking 11:15 in the morning,” says Grohl. “I said, ‘Sure’.”
“I will never, ever forget every little detail of that day,” says Grohl. “Especially not the black underwear, with a spiderweb and a black widow spider right where the dick is.”
The new issue of Classic Rock, guest edited by Grohl and the Foo Fighters, is on sale now.
Foo Fighters have now released a third single from Medicine At Midnight. Waiting On A War is a ballad inspired by Grohl’s memories of growing up in the 1980s amid the ever-present threat of nuclear war and his hope that his daughters might grow up in a world free of such fears.
