Rock superstar Dave Grohl has claimed that he wouldn’t be able to walk ‘if it wasn’t for Ireland’.
The Foo Fighters front man and former Nirvana drummer broke his leg when he fell off the stage while performing a show in Sweden back in 2015.
He was able to fulfil the North American leg of the tour thanks to a specially designed throne for him to perform on.
However, the injury forced him to cancel a string of high profile European dates including headline shows at Glastonbury and Wembley stadium.
However, things could have been even worse as the star reveals that if it hadn’t been for an Irish physiotherapist he might not even be walking now.
He said: “If it wasn’t for Ireland, I wouldn’t be walking right now, because my physical therapist Freddie Murray is from Tipp.
“He was with me for six months, and I would not be walking if it wasn’t for that guy. Four hours a day for six months, he was the one pushing me to get up and do it again. So next time we’re there, we gotta have a big shout out to Freddie.”
The injury forced Grohl and his band into an indefinite hiatus as he found his recovery both physically and mentally gruelling.
After the band had finished recording their previous album, 2014’s Sonic Highways, Grohl had some huge – if slightly unrealistic -plans for the next record.
He said: ““I had this f**king crazy idea for the next record. I said, ‘Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna book one night at the Hollywood Bowl, and we’re gonna build a recording studio on the stage, invite 20,000 people and record our new record live to the world.’ And I just kept pushing it, seeing how far we could take it, see how extreme we could go . . . and I brought the idea to the band, and they said ‘You’re f**king crazy’,”
“I was like, ‘No, no. We can do it.’ Then we went on the road for Sonic Highways, and we stayed out for another six months, until we decided we needed a break.
And once I actually got home, sat down and thought about it, I thought, Y’know, the most radical idea for us right now would be to just to walk into a studio like any other f**king band and make a record.”
This is the path they chose as they headed to Hawaii to meet Greg Kurstin who helped the band record their new album, Concrete Gold.
Grohl selected Kurstin after becoming a fan of his band, The Bird and the Bee.
Grohl said: “That first Bird and the Bee record became my favourite album that year, I listened to it a thousand times – as well as the heavy s**t like Motörhead and Sepultura and all of those heavy things that I like.”
Written by Michael Kehoe @michaelcalling
