When a friend calls, Dave Grohl answers. And when that particular friend is Josh Homme, calling to ask him to make an appearance at the Josh Homme & Friends benefit concert, the Foo Fighters frontman jumped straight into rehearsal mode. Grohl’s process started with pulling up the lyrics to Doja Cat’s rebellious single “Paint the Town Red” and concluded with him penning a completely new song specifically for Homme.
“I spent a couple of days trying to figure out like, ‘What the fuck am I gonna play?’” Grohl told the audience at the Los Angeles concert on Wednesday night. “My first idea that I had… I was like, ‘You know what? This shit’s funny – I’m gonna come out and I’m gonna do a fucking Doja Cat song.’”
Grohl spent days of his preparation time attempting to memorize the popular record, but didn’t internalize much more than the hooky “Bitch, I said what I said” portion of the chorus. “There are so many lyrics to that song – like maybe more than ‘The Sound Of Silence’, which is a lot,” he added. “I woke up at like two o’clock in the morning — I was like, ‘I’m not gonna roll out ‘Everlong’ for the thousandth time’.”
For a second, he searched for a backup option on Spotify, combing through an acoustic covers playlist. But then he seemingly remembered that he’s literally Dave Grohl and can just write something himself. Problem solved.
“So I did something that’s maybe considered really, really uncool. But I wrote a song that’s really genuine and earnest about my friend Josh,” he told the audience, adding: “I thought, ‘I’m gonna write a song about him and embarrass him in front of all of his friends’… by actually singing about how much I fucking love you, man. And I’ve never even sung it out loud.”
In the song, Grohl reminds Homme that he’ll always be there for him. “When I’m feeling I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough/ If you feel like riding, you know I’ll ride with you,” he sings in the opening verse. “If I’m free and you’ve got big plans, take it from me I’ll take that chance/ Tell me the reason, I understand/ Whatever you need I’ve got you, man.”
Homme embraced Grohl in a strong hug at the end of his appearance. “We’re all here for this one big reason, but I don’t know if we’d all be here if it weren’t for that guy,” Grohl said. “And when that guy fucking calls you and says, ‘Hey, I’m doing something’… he’ll kick your ass if you don’t, basically.”
The Josh Homme & Friends concert — which also featured appearances from Beck, St. Vincent and The Kills — was hosted in support of the Sweet Stuff Foundation. The non-profit was founded just over a decade ago to provide aid and assistance to “career musicians, recording engineers and their families struggling with illness and disability,” according to the organization’s official website.
Last year, Homme revealed that he had been diagnosed with cancer in 2022. In an interview with Revolver magazine, he shared that the surgery he underwent to remove it had been “successful.”