Dave Grohl Tells Story of ‘Epic Fail’ Trip to Pantera’s Strip Club
Though the story has been told before, Dave Grohl goes into significant details about his failed trip to visit Vinnie Paul and Dimebag Darrell at their Dallas Clubhouse strip club in the latest installment of "Dave's True Stories."
Grohl takes readers back to the beginning of how he first met the band, with Foo Fighters being asked to play Ozzfest. If that sentence seems odd to you, it does to Dave as well, who recalls, "Ozzfest? The Foo Fighters? The mother of all metal festivals, the meeting of all Marshalls, the most tyrannical thrashapalooza known to man was requesting ... the 'Learn to Fly' guys?" and later wondering if Ashton Kutcher was going to jump out while filming an episode of Punk'd.
After being told they'd be closing the show in place of Korn, who had to bow out, Grohl was then told they'd follow Pantera. "You'll be going on after Pantera," Grohl recalls. "Silence. Dead air. My throat closed, my stomach dropped. My butthole turned into a Star Wars trash compactor." But the money was good and the Foos took up the challenge.
Grohl recalls Pantera absolutely destroying the stage prior to his set, and luckily managing to get through their own performance not getting bottled or losing a limb.
But afterward, Grohl got to meet the Pantera guys who welcomed him. "We got along like a house on fire," says Grohl, recalling, "Anyone who ever had the honor to hang out with Pantera knows that it was not for the faint of heart. First of all, there was never a band more welcoming, more hospitable, more down to earth than Pantera. It didn't matter who you were, what you did, where you were from, they would welcome you in, stuff a beer in your hand, a shot in your mouth, and make you laugh harder than you've ever laughed before (until you wound up barfing it all back up and having the most soul crushing hangover of your life the next morning)."
He eventually was granted invite with a business card to get them in to the Abbott brothers' strip club, which he and fellow Foo Taylor Hawkins decided to take advantage of on a cross-country trip to Virginia, going out of their way to detour through Dallas.
"Excited doesn't even scratch the surface here. Not since I was a young boy waiting for the living room lights to come on Christmas morning had I felt such anticipation. Of all the shit I'd seen in my life, this was bound to the the mic drop, epitome of rock and roll," says Grohl, but his hopes would soon be dashed.
Making a stop in Barstow as part of their trip, Grohl had accidentally lost his wallet at a gas station. Rather that double back the hundreds of miles to retrieve it, they forged ahead to Dallas, only to be turned away by the doorman when Grohl didn't have ID or his "invite card." Dejected, he and Hawkins continued their trip to Virginia, never realizing the epic hang they envisioned.
"Three days, 1,400 miles and a dream stomped out like a dirty old Parliament Light in the parking lot of an industrial complex outside of Dallas. No candy coating here, it crushed my soul," said Grohl, adding, "I believe this is what people refer to now as an 'epic fail,' Back then it was referred to as a 'steaming shit sandwich,' and we had to eat every last bite."
As fate would have it, Grohl would meet a woman a full decade later whose parents owned the gas station where he left his wallet and had it returned to him. "My golden ticket, my key to the Clubhouse, like a knife twisting in my back," recalled the singer upon the return of his wallet. "I had to smile. This now made it all worthwhile."
"Dime and Vinnie have since passed on to the great gig in the sky, but every memory I have of them is a joyous one. I'm so lucky and honored to have known them, even just a little. They are missed by many, but their legacy lives on. Crank some Pantera and raise a shot of Crown for them. They would have been your friends, too," says Grohl.
Scroll through the full "Dave's True Stories" installment below.
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