Dave Grohl may be one of the biggest rock stars in the world, but it seems even he isn’t immune to getting starstruck when meeting an idol.
Grohl has reflected on the first time he met David Bowie, saying it was an out-of-body experience.
“Oh, my God. Well, you know, I remember the first time I saw David Bowie in person was at a festival in England that he was headlining, we were lower down on the bill,” he explained to ABC News.
Grohl continued: “And I stood in the photo pit and looked at him and it was like seeing an alien. You know, it was like seeing a UFO for the first time, like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s real’. That’s, something I’ve never seen before.
“And then getting to meet him – all of that feeling coming down to Earth, realizing, ‘Oh, my God, what a gentleman! What a brilliant, sweet, kind, outrageously funny person!’ And then I recorded a song with him. This [was] years ago, and watching him step in front of a microphone and begin to sing and you realize, ‘Wow, that voice – that’s real, that just comes out of his mouth, that iconic voice!’
“The great thing about it is that it really humanizes everything. We’re like, ‘Wow, that’s a real person.’ It’s reassuring, but at the same time, you’re like, ‘That’s a hero.’ That’s not just another person. That’s David Bowie.”
As part of Foo Fighters, Grohl played alongside at the Madison Square Garden to mark The Thin White Duke turning 50.
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“When he walked (levitated?) onstage that night, I felt as if I were being visited by another life form,” Grohl wrote. “The kind of ‘Starman’ I searched the night sky for as a child, waiting for his gilded spacecraft to descend upon my front yard and take me away from my banal suburban life. It was my first time witnessing Bowie’s grace and power live,” Grohl reflected in his Instagram series Dave’s True Stories.
Grohl kept in touch with Bowie after the performance, in hopes that he could work one on one with the legendary artists. However, upon approaching Bowie and asking for a collab, Grohl was infamously told to simply “fuck off”.
Watch the full interview below:
