When Dave Grohl played on a Michael Jackson song
It’s not like Dave Grohl isn’t already a busy man. The legendary Foo Fighters frontman has a lot on his plate with his day job, but even still, Grohl manages to find time to collaborate with other artists and make guest appearances on albums. From Tenacious D to Nine Inch Nails, Grohl has the kind of resume that can only be bested by… his new drummer, session whiz Josh Freese.
With Foo Fighters back in the swing of the album-tour promotional cycle, it doesn’t seem likely that Grohl will field any calls to play on other people’s albums any time soon. But then again, Grohl has always been busy, and he’s always found time to show up and bash out some heavy rhythms.
Back when the Foos completed Wasting Light in 2011, Grohl sat down with Classic Rock Magazine to talk about the process. “I’ve never considered it work,” Grohl shared. “Sometimes you’re doing 15 interviews a day, and you’re jet-lagged, and you miss your family. That’s when you start feeling like: ‘Okay, this is kind of like a job right now.’ But all the rest of the time, when you’re up on stage in front of a fucking massive festival, and they’re singing your songs, that doesn’t feel like work.”
“When you’re hanging out with your buddies all day long, drinking and making a record, it’s not like work,” Grohl adds. “You think my wife thinks I work? [chuckles] Sometimes I tell her: ‘Babe, it’s my job.’ She’s like: ‘That’s not a fucking job.’ I’m like: ‘Yeah, you’re right.'”
During the chat, Grohl reminisced about his alternative career as a drummer-for-hire, specifically one instance that almost saw him paired up with Michael Jackson. “Sometimes I get upset they didn’t call me: ‘Damn it, I thought they were going to call.’ The best story is the Michael Jackson song,” Grohl explained. “Last year. I met Lenny Kravitz at some movie award ceremony thing. He’s like: ‘Yo, man, give me your number, let’s jam sometime.’ So I gave him my number. And he leaves a message saying: ‘Dude, call me right now. I have a project.'”
He added: “So I call him up, and he says: ‘Do you want to play drums on a Michael Jackson song? There’s this song that me and Michael worked on in 1992, but it never came out, and I want to finish it,'” Grohl explained. “‘And I’d love to have your huge drums on the chorus.'”
“So Lenny sends over the track, and I sit down with Butch Vig, and we record all this huge fucking shit,” he adds. “I sent it to Lenny, and he’s like: ‘Dude, this is going to be awesome.’ I’m like: ‘I’m on a Michael Jackson track!'”
“So a month goes by, and another, and another, and I still haven’t heard anything from anyone,” Grohl says. “Finally, I hear the song online. You know what they used? One snare hit. That’s it. I don’t know who’s playing drums on it, but it ain’t me. It says: ‘Featuring Dave Grohl’. And it’s like: ‘It does? I can’t hear me in that!’ It’s funny.”
Check out the song, ‘(I Can’t Make It) Another Day’, down below.
