(Credits: Far Out / Roger Woolman)
Wed 15 October 2025 2:00, UK
Any major rock and roll fan like Dave Grohl would do nearly anything to see their favourite bands onstage.
Grohl will be a fan of all flavours of music until the day he drops, and there’s no doubt that he gets the same rush from jamming with members of Rush and Led Zeppelin as he would have had when he was first cutting his teeth on the drums. But even for as big a star as Grohl still is, being treated like one of the fans can be a little bit of a disadvantage at the wrong venue.
Then again, it’s not like Grohl was openly trying to be a total fanboy whenever he saw one of his idols. He felt right at home playing with Jimmy Page when Foo Fighters played Wembley Stadium, and it takes a certain degree of restraint for anyone to come off as calm and collected when performing next to someone like Paul McCartney, and yet Grohl made the whole thing look easy when he started working with the former Beatle on the song ‘Cut Me Some Slack’.
If there’s one type of music that Grohl held close to his heart, though, it was metal. He was far more into punk when he first started, but if anyone cared about the power behind drumming, the sounds of everyone from Zeppelin to Black Sabbath to Metallica were the first places everyone went to, even if it meant going through Lars Ulrich’s unconventional approach to drumming. But not many bands understood that sense of rhythm quite like Pantera did.
As much as the band’s history has been more than a little bit complicated, their glory years on albums like Cowboys From Hell made them look like a hardcore version of a band like ZZ Top. All their songs were more than a little bit aggro and would never have fit on traditional pop radio at the time, but it was hard for anyone to listen to a track like ‘Walk’ or ‘I’m Broken’ and not want to start moving a little bit.
And while Grohl loved their music, anyone showing up backstage at a Pantera show knew they were going to be in for a good time. Suffice to say, the band liked a drink or two or 20, and even if all of them were hammered after every show, Grohl was more than happy to have some fun with them whenever they crossed paths. But even after going out of his way to go to their clubhouse, Grohl was greeted with a cold shoulder before he even walked in.
It didn’t help that Grohl had left his wallet at a gas station by accident, but even the name-drop method didn’t help him when he showed up, saying, “We make this 800 mile detour to get to the clubhouse. I’m like ‘This is gonna be the best fucking night of our lives’. And this guy’s like ‘Can I see some ID? I can’t let you in unless you got ID.’ I said, ‘But we’re friends with Pantera.’ And he goes, ‘Everybody’s friends with Pantera.’ And they wouldn’t let us in. I was fucking gutted.”
Although Grohl did recover his wallet years after the fact, it’s not like he didn’t have more opportunities to party with his idols. It’s a shame not to hang out with Pantera, but considering he was able to hang out with Ulrich during Metallica’s tour and eventually have a party with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Paul McCartney, and AC/DC all at the same time, it’s safe to say that he has had a lot more ‘pinch-me’ moments than anyone could have imagined in their lifetime.
But even if Grohl hasn’t always made the best choices when it comes to misplacing his ID, the fact that he’s still stoked to be rubbing elbows with the greats is what makes him so endearing. Because no matter what he’s doing, he’s always going to be living out the kind of rock and roll fantasies that everyone wishes that they could have had.
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