Watch Foo Fighters, Zac Brown Cover Black Sabbath on ‘Letterman’
Foo Fighters Week kicked off Monday night on the Late Show With David Letterman with an unlikely collaboration doing a surprise cover: Dave Grohl and company joined up with Zac Brown for a four-guitar rendition of Black Sabbath‘s “War Pigs.” “Well there, you see, that’s what we’re talking about,” Letterman says. “Zac Brown. Black Sabbath. Foo Fighters. I don’t know, what do you kids want from me?”
Prior to the performance, Grohl sat down with Letterman to talk about his eight-year-old daughter’s love of Amy Winehouse and gangsta rap plus the music Grohl’s own parents played when he was his daughter’s age. “We would listen to Candide, then Neil Young, then Slayer,” Grohl said. “It was all over the map, but what I got to appreciate was that music is such a beautiful art that you can’t really judge it, you just have to let it ingratiate.”
Grohl also shared an anecdote from his early days as a professional drummer. “When Nirvana became popular, my father called and said, ‘You know this isn’t going to last, right?’,” Grohl said. “And I said, ‘No, of course, I can’t imagine this would last at all.’ But then he gave me lots of really great advice.”
Grohl also credited Letterman and his Worldwide Pants production company with helping to bring Sonic Highways to television. Letterman, who was a fan of Grohl’s documentary Sound City, asked the musician why he didn’t just make Sonic Highways himself. “I just got lazy. I figured this was TV,” Grohl joked. As for Sonic Highways, which Letterman likened to Paul Shaffer’s 1989 album Coast to Coast, Grohl talked about how the city’s environment, tempo and even weather influenced each of the album’s eight songs.
Brown, who appears on the Nashville episode of the Foo Fighters’ musical travelogue, is among the many all-star artists that guest on Sonic Highways throughout the band’s journey. Sonic Highways premieres October 17th on HBO, while the album arrives November 10th.