Dave Grohl has been honoured for his community volunteer work at a ‘Hope In The City Of Angels’ event in Los Angeles.
The Foo Fighters frontman has regularly devoted his time over the last few years providing food for homeless communities, including on his 56th birthday in January, when he volunteered by making meals for those affected by the Los Angeles wildfires.
Last year, he spent his Super Bowl Sunday barbecuing at a homeless shelter in LA, and did the same in 2023, spending 16 hours on the barbecue at the Hope of the Valley rescue mission.
In December 2023, he used his day off from Foo Fighters‘ Australia tour to help feed the homeless, volunteering with a Melbourne-based charity. He also stepped up to the barbecue in 2018 to cook for Californian firefighters as a thank you for their tireless efforts in tackling the devastating wildfires which had ravaged the state.
On Saturday (October 18), he was celebrated for his efforts at a Hope The Mission event at LA’s BMO Stadium.
In a speech, he said (via Blabbermouth): “This whole thing started years ago when I was going to the studio one night. We have a studio in Northridge, and it was a particularly cold February, and I noticed how many people were on the street. And I’d cooked before for charities and for fundraisers and things like that, which is always great. But I was looking at these people that needed to eat and I’m, like, ‘What the fuck?’ Let’s make some food and give it to the people.”
“And we basically literally knocked on Rowan’s [Vansleve, Hope The Mission president] door and said, like, ‘How do we do this?’ And he said, ‘Great. Let’s figure it out.’ And we pulled up in the parking lot and we started feeding people.”
Grohl continued: “There’s something about the simple human interaction of handing someone a plate of food that needs food. When you ask them if they’d like beef or pork, and they say, ‘Both, please.’ And you give them both, and they say, ‘God bless you,’ they mean it.
“So then, after doing it once, it was, like, ‘Oh, let’s do more. How can we do more?’ And then Rowan’s, like, ‘Okay, could you feed 500 people?’ Like, ‘Yeah, we can feed 500.’ ‘Oh, could you feed 800 people?’ ‘Yeah, we [could] feed [800 people.’ ‘Can you feed 2,000 people?’ I’m, like, ‘I don’t know. But let’s figure it out and let’s see if we can.’
“There is something simple and beautiful about that simple interaction, which is is showing love and care and compassion for another human being. But it’s also really good barbecue.”
As for Foo Fighters, they recently shared a teaser on social media, featuring a soaring guitar riff and pummelling drums and a caption reading: “about to take flight…”
The teaser was also accompanied by a picture of a yellow, blue and green bird – a symbol that fans think is a subtle way of the Foos teasing upcoming dates in Brazil.
Earlier this month (October 3), Foo Fighters released a new live album capturing their recent run of intimate club shows. The six-track record, titled ‘Are Playing Where??? Vol. I’, arrived exclusively on Bandcamp.
The band’s 11th and latest album, ‘But Here We Are’, arrived in 2023. It marked their first material since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins the previous year, and saw them enlist Josh Freese as a touring sticksman.
English (US) · 