Dave Grohl was mortified after he insulted David Bowie.
The Foo Fighters frontman’s embarrassing chat with the Ziggy Stardust legend in a studio came just after he saw the “angel” perform in an “otherworldly” concert.
Grohl’s Blunder
His praise for Bowie – who died after a secret battle with liver cancer in January 2016, aged 69 – turned honest after the latter pressed Dave, 57, for his reaction to the performance, described as a “religious experience”.
He revealed on the Dish from Waitrose podcast: “I’m like, ‘Oh f***.’ So, the first thing to come out of my mouth, like an idiot, I said, ‘Well, the first thing I noticed was all of your imperfections.'”
Shocked hosts Nick Grimshaw, 41, and Angela Hartnett, 57, then learned Dave “backpedalled so fast”.
The Shame Shame hitmaker added: “I don’t know how I got out of that one. But I was like, what did I just– I would never say that to anybody. Isn’t that horrible?”
Dave quizzed himself whether his brutal response inspired the track that he and five-time Grammy award winner Bowie recorded for the latter’s guitar player, Reeves Gabrels.
Musical Inspiration
Following Dave’s red-faced blunder, Heroes hitmaker Bowie “sat down on the floor” with a big bag and “pulled out all of these magazines and postcards and photos”.
Dave continued: “And he lays them out across the floor, and he grabs a notebook. And he had no lyrics, and he just sort of sat and looked at all these things, and he wrote this song. It was called I’m Nothing Without My Face.”
The Run performer got “chills”, and everyone was left “blown away” as they heard Bowie lay his vocals for the track, which Dave hailed “the most reassuring, beautiful thing”.
Dave spotted the lyrics, which featured a “self-portrait” scribbed in the corner by Bowie, on a music stand, and “me and the other guys in the band were all looking at each other like – ‘Who’s gonna take that f***'”.
Dave revealed he “snatched it” for his sister, who “turned me on to David Bowie when I was maybe 12 or 13”.
The 15-time Grammy award winner added: “And I framed it and I gave it to my sister for Christmas. And she just gave it back to me in my closet.
Reflecting on the Past
“And it’s funny because I never considered this until just now, that conversation that we had when we first sat down in the studio, maybe that was the response to [my imperfections]. Yeah, that’s weird. Just another Tuesday night in the studio.”