Dave Grohl Details Disappointing Final Exchange With David Bowie

Bruce Henne | 04-30-2020

(hennemusic) Dave Grohl recounts a series of encounters through the years with one of his heroes, David Bowie, in the latest edition of his Instagram series, "Dave's True Stories."

Long before the two rockers met and worked together, Grohl was already a diehard Bowie fan as he grew up in Virginia. "Like most red-blooded rock musicians, David Bowie provided an indelible addition to the soundtrack of my life from an early age," explains Grohl. "His first live album, 'David Live', was on regular rotation in my living room when I was a kid, and his classic track, 'Suffragette City', was quite a hit at the backyard parties I played with my nerdy high school band in the early '80s (I sang the "Hey Man!" background vocals with the best pre-pubescent shriek I could possibly squeeze out of my skinny little neck).

A few years after Grohl and Nirvana included Bowie's 1970 track, "The Man Who Sold The World", during their 1993 appearance on MTV Unplugged ("a memory that I still cherish to this day", he says), the guitarist saw the music icon in person for the first time when he and the Foo Fighters were on the bill at a festival in Europe; the two would meet and perform together at Bowie's 50th birthday concert at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1997.

"I remember glancing over mid-performance to see his iconic eyes as the crowd roared...and they were looking right into mine," Grohl writes. "Gives me chills, still, to this day."

Grohl would soon cross paths with David again - in a recording studio session for a project by the singer's guitar player, Reeves Gabrels - before he took the opportunity to approach Bowie to collaborate on a song for a major motion picture film soundtrack.

When Bowie contacted Grohl by email to decline the offer, the guitarist thanked him for his consideration and left the door open to possibly working together in the future...which brought an immediate response.

"Well, that's settled," replied Bowie. "Now f--k off."

"Frozen in my living room chair, my stomach dropped like a lead weight as I stared down at my laptop screen in horror," recalls Grohl. "Fingers trembling above the cold keyboard, I read and re-read those two sentences over and over again, praying that perhaps it was just some sort of typo, some kind of cruel autocorrect disaster. But...it was no mistake.

"David Bowie had just told me to f--k off."

It would be last exchange between the two rockers before Bowie's passing from liver cancer in 2016. Read Dave's full story here.

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