Original subtitles

(upbeat music)

MAN: Check, check, one, two, check.

Check, one, two.

Check, check, one, two.

One, two.

One, two.

Hello, one, two, yeah, check, check, check.

Playing to an audience is like,

it's some kind of other dimension.

(upbeat rock music)

You live for those moments on stage

and you live for that connection to other people

that are like you.

Rock and roll is the opportunity to scream at the world,

I am here, I exist.

Music is the most powerful thing in the universe

and if people don't believe it, they're crazy.

(audience cheering)

From the time I get on stage,

every once in awhile, it's magic that hits me.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Ah, yeah, yeah ♪

Rock and roll, it gives you the power,

you know, the force.

That wonderful adrenaline rush.

(audience cheering)

There's only one reason we do that shit.

'Cause you fucking love it.

(upbeat rock music)

(audience cheering)

DAVE: All of the biggest bands in the world,

they had to start somewhere.

Everybody I know started out like this, in a van.

Yeah.

DAVE: You know, you're crammed

in there together for months

and it can be totally fucking disgusting

and absolutely beautiful all at once.

And what happens in the van is the foundation

of who we become.

When are we gonna eat again? We're gonna eat

some clown meat tonight. Clown meat. (laughing)

DAVE: And it creates this unique perspective

that we all share.

So yeah, this is the van.

It's cool.

It's not very comfortable,

but you make it work.

DAVE: Personally, I don't think that I'd still be here

if it weren't for those early experiences

touring in the van, touring with my friends.

If it weren't for that old van, I don't where I'd be.

Remember the red van that we had

that we sold to Brain Brown? Yeah.

Mm-hmm, that was your first van.

That was my first van. Where's it now?

(upbeat rock music)

Guess what?

I got it back.

(door creaks) (Dave mimics creaking)

(engine starts)

I gotta be honest.

This van

has stood the test of time.

It was brand spanking new when we got it.

And every time I take a right I feel like

I'm gonna fall out the door.

It didn't used to be like that. (laughing)

Okay, so I'm making a movie about van touring.

Yeah.

DAVE: And its importance in spreading music around

either the country or the world,

right? The world. Yeah.

DAVE: It almost pollinates.

It's like cross-pollination.

Everyone we've talked to basically has the same story.

The van stories.

DAVE: People are like,

especially like these big musicians,

they're kind of proud that they toured-

Absolutely, yeah.

DAVE: I just love that I could talk to Ringo about it,

talk to you about it.

talk to the drummer of Slayer about it.

Yes. Talk to Ian

Mackaye about it.

And it seems like everybody has the same passion

and the same drive and whatever it takes.

Okay.

Can I just say one thing? Yeah.

I realized I was thinking

while I was driving over here going like

what am I walking into?

Oh, it's about van touring.

And so I was just revisiting all that.

I realized I'd actually never toured in van.

Okay. So can I go now?

Yes. And cut. (guys laughing)

well, no, because it's funny when we started this

I thought, well, there'll be a lot of great stories

and people talking about the logistics of touring in a van

and anecdotes about turning an a van and shit like that

but then it sort of evolved into something bigger

that's more about people.

Why the fuck people leave everything behind

and just sort of quit life and start playing music

and wandering around with their friends.

So, but tell me your name and where you're from.

My name is (laughing)

I'm Lars and I'm from Denmark.

So say our names right now?

(guys laughing)

I'm Slash from LA.

Duff Mckagan, I'm from Seattle, Washington.

My name's Annie Clark and I'm from Dallas, Texas.

My name is Ben Harper and I'm from Claremont, California.

My name is Jennifer Precious Finch

and I am from Los Angeles, California.

I am The Edge and I play guitar for a band called U2

and I hail from a small village

north of Dublin city in Ireland called Malahide.

My name is Flea, I'm from Melbourne, Australia.

DAVE: Were you born in Melbourne?

I was. 1962.

D.H. Peligro from the band Dead Kennedy's

and I'm born in St. Louis, Missouri.

My name is Exene Cervenka.

I'm from Illinois.

I'm Brian Johnson as you well know.

And I'm from Dunston, which is just outside

of Newcastle in the northeast of England.

My name is Kira.

I'm from New Haven, Connecticut originally.

My name is Tony Kanal.

Where am I from?

I was born in London, England.

Were you really? Yeah.

Fuck, I didn't know that. Yeah.

My name's Steven Tyler.

I'm from Maui,

LA,

Laurel Canyon,

Boston, New Hampshire,

and every now and then the way out is here.

I'm Isaiah, I play the bass.

My name's Dee and I sing and play guitar.

I'm Solomon and I play drums.

DAVE: And what's the name of your band?

Radkey. And where you from?

We're from St. Joseph, Missouri.

Really? Yeah.

(guys laughing)

Yeah. Yeah.

DAVE: What's that like?

It's not that awesome.

♪ Kids these days ♪

♪ They want it all ♪

♪ They just trip ♪

♪ Trip and fall ♪

We were home schooled,

so there wasn't a lot to do

besides listen to our dad's record collection

and kind of hang out.

And we just got kind of bored and were like all right,

we can just kind of hang out and play music together

and We had plenty of time to do that.

And then pretty much get out of St. Joe.

Like the rock was able to get us out of our city,

which was great, you know.

♪ If the world starts waking these kids up ♪

♪ From their games and their dark black makeup ♪

So when you're starting out as a young band,

in what I imagine is a small town?

It's actually bigger, it's kind of big.

It's just kind of lame, man. It's weird.

There's just no music scene, really.

Like we had to play out of town

because people didn't want to book us

because they would say that we don't book rap groups,

but we had a CD, so they never listened to the CD.

So yeah, we just played outside it,

we played Kansas City, Kansas and all that stuff

until at some point, someone booked us in St. Joe.

♪ I just can't shake it ♪

♪ I'm gonna take them away ♪

DAVE: So is your dad sort of like

the tour manager/roadie/driver?

Yes. Yes.

And yeah, Dad hooked us up with all the music

we listened to, takes us out on the road, you know,

takes care of us to this day.

It's really cool

like there's not much of a change from being at home

so we can stay on the road for a really long time.

It's just crazy I've been doing this is for nine years.

Yep. And we're still doing it.

(laughing)

They told me that your kids are gonna start a band

and you can quit your shitty Walmart job

and be on the road touring with your favorite band

for the rest of your life.

Be an amazing opportunity.

It's just craziness.

DAVE: What's great about Radkey's story is

that it's not that different from everyone I know.

My parents decided move to Dublin

when I was one to this little town called Malahide

and that's where I grew up with my brother and my sister.

The one downside of living in the burbs

outside of Dublin city was often not a lot going on.

So we would have to find other ways to amuse ourselves

and that's when we got into explosives.

(dramatic music)

And that was a kind of interesting phase.

We had a couple of summers

having great fun blowing things up.

You're gonna lose your global entry.

(The Edge laughing)

This is probably true.

I don't know if we'll use that part.

Has U2 ever used pyro?

I feel like you've never fucking used-

No, we got over that phase, you know, age 15.

But you know, it's like, you know,

you're in this nice little town, but not a lot happening

so things went horribly wrong

when I discovered rock and roll.

(laughing)

I was trying to remember what it was

that got me interested in rock and roll

and I think it was watching "A Hard Day's Night."

(upbeat music)

(audience screaming)

♪ It's been a hard day's night ♪

♪ And I've been working like a dog ♪

I just was like wow.

You get to do that?

That's amazing. I want to do that.

♪ But when I get home to you ♪

♪ I'll find the things that you do ♪

♪ Will make me feel alright ♪

♪ You know I feel all right ♪

♪ You know I feel alright ♪

(audience cheering)

It was just that time with the Beatles,

the storms, everything was starting to happen.

Nobody knew quite what was happening

but it was like grunge.

What the fuck's happened?

What was that?

At 15 I had to leave school

and start an apprenticeship in a factory.

There was 60 kids in this apprentice group

and everybody was starting bands.

"Brian, do you want to start a band?"

And I said, "Yeah, I wanna be a drummer."

I didn't like singing, I want to be a drummer,

and then I went to see how much kit of drums was

and that was the end of that dream.

It was just ridiculous,

but you never felt poor.

You never felt poor because everybody else was the same.

In fact, the only way you could get out of there

was if you were a good football player or music.

(upbeat music)

The first time I heard something that just (indistinct) me,

just jumped out at me,

thought, well, off the floor I was about 12 or something,

the BBC television, there was only one channel.

Mix through, queue on two.

Today we have a surprise for you

because they all talked like that

with this awfully posh English accent.

And she said, "We have a young man from America,

a film of this young man and it he's called Little Richard."

And I was going Little Richard?

And anyway, it just come on and there was this

peacock of a guy, you know?

Fucking hair, the suit and he just went...

♪ A whop bam boo bop bopa-a-lu a lam-boop-ba ♪

♪ Tutti frutti, oh Rudy ♪

♪ Tutti frutti, oh Rudy ♪

♪ Tutti frutti, oh Rudy ♪

♪ Tutti frutti, oh Rudy ♪

And I just went, "What the fuck?"

It just turned me on me tits.

I just couldn't believe anybody could sing like that.

I just, I wanna sing like that, you know?

♪ Bop bopa-a-lu a whop bam boo ♪

The music we had was the car radio.

And there was like Ray Charles and you know, Johnny Cash

and the Supremes and the Beatles eventually and all that.

There was no connection between that and real life.

There was no idea like, you know what?

I think I'll be in a band someday.

Like I want to be just like Jimi Hendrix,

maybe I learn to play guitar.

That didn't happen in a rural area of Illinois.

You didn't feel it.

I mean, I think it's a lot different now. Right?

The last thing I ever thought of,

probably nun,

teacher,

mother,

nurse, maybe if I didn't tell anybody, stewardess.

(plane roaring)

In the projects in Morrison Lane where we lived,

my aunts would come over and they would just

have a couple of drinks and started listening

to like R&B.

R&B, all the Detroit sound, all the,

Gladys Knight & the Pips,

The Temptations, all that stuff that came out of Motown.

They would all sit around and groove to it.

And so as little kids we would just kind of peer in

and like, what are they doing?

Well, they sure seem to be having fun.

Russell, this father I grew up with,

he did buy a Danelectro guitar.

The one that came in the case with the amp.

He couldn't play it, but he would just let us play it.

And I would just get on it and go, woo, woo, woo

and just try to make a fucking sound.

And I was like wow, this is cool.

It makes a sound. It makes a sound.

I'm just making noise but I was fascinated.

(upbeat drum music)

I was in the school band, you know.

Learn my paradiddles and my single stroke roles,

you know, just the basics, but I got tired of it.

And I felt that listening to Zeppelin, you know,

listening to the Stones, you know,

I learned more about rhythm and song structure

and melody than somebody sitting there

teaching me his own way.

I wanted to have a band by the time

I got my first drum kit.

That had to have been like eighth grade.

I got a drum kit when I was maybe 11 or 12.

And I would sit, I had it modeled master after

Ian Paice and John Coghlan, the guy from Status Quo.

My friends would come over.

We'd take some tennis rackets, they would do guitar.

And then we would, we had these, it was like an old house.

It had like old school radiators

and we would turn the radiators up

and then we would, don't tell anybody this.

We'd take our shirts off

and then we would like sweat and we would be on stage

and we would be like in a rock band, it was so cool.

All right, we have to cut it all the way back

because my neighbors were core punk rockers.

They had the garage band

in the 80s that drove the entire neighborhood

property values down.

Pierced cheeks, mohawks to the moon, right?

And they actually had a super influential punk rock band

at the time called

Christian Death.

Those were your neighbors? Yeah.

Christian Death were my neighbors.

So they would hear me playing

like Casey Kasem pop music next door.

So I'd be blasting that right out the window

where they'd be trying to rehearse.

So one time they finally just came in and mobbed me, right?

So they came in, pulled the wires on my receiver

and just said, "Here.

You need to start here, man.

Here is a Clash record.

Here is Paul Weller in The Jam.

A handful of records, here.

This is what, let's start listening to this."

I never had an older brother or sister

so my musical experiences where, you know,

I would gravitate to, like Prince is my favorite

and still to this day is my favorite.

And when I got in No Doubt,

Eric Stefani, who started the band

and the rest of the guys, Chris Webb and all these guys

exposed me like to the great,

it was just like this incredible moment

of just like (upbeat music)

Fishbone and Bad Brains and the Peppers

and everything at that time.

And I was a sponge and it was just like (mimics explosion),

my whole world changed.

♪ Party at ground zero ♪

♪ A "B" movie starring you ♪

DAVE: Do you feel like you're musically inclined?

I don't know if I ever gave that much of a thought

like I just enjoyed it and it was fun

and I'd kind of found a thing and I was doing it,

and I kept doing it.

(upbeat music)

The story of how U2 formed,

having learned basic guitar playing, like real basic.

I had this idea that maybe at some point

I would join a garage band.

A junior pupil had a drum kit and he wants to form a band

and had put a note on the notice board of the school

for musicians.

So I found the note,

took down the phone number, called this young guy,

Larry Mullen was his name.

Found out there was a meeting in his house.

At that first meeting, were all members of U2

with like three other people.

We started all gathering instruments

and then we got a chance to play together.

And that's when we realized that

we had a lot of work to do. (laughing)

It was, it was just cacophony.

No one could play in time, no one could play in tune,

it was not good.

But I don't know what.

we just decided to persevere.

Over weeks and months slowly, something starts to gel.

Our slow increase in skill suddenly met the Ramones.

♪ Well, the girls are frisky in old 'Frisco ♪

♪ A pretty little chick wherever you go ♪

♪ Oh ♪

And we, that's it, this is the answer.

This is the music we need to play.

Simple, heavy cord guitar.

But it's punk rock.

♪ Where they're out there having fun ♪

♪ In the warm California sun ♪

♪ Where they're out there having fun ♪

♪ In the warm California sun ♪

(audience applauding)

I know when I talked to you about music before,

you grew up loving classic rock.

Good, great rock bands.

Great drummers.

You loved Zeppelin.

You loved, you know, the great rock band, Sabbath, you know.

And for me, like when I was a kid, I was just like,

"Rock music is for dumb people.

Rock music is for people who like haircuts

and clothes and they don't care about music."

You know, when I was a kid, my life was very tumultuous.

I was a complete fuck up in school.

I started doing drugs when I was 11 years old.

You know, I was scared to be home.

My stepdad was a junky and wild and violent

and it wasn't a safe place, you know?

And the one thing was I got to play music in school,

and I played trumpet.

I had dreams of being a jazz trumpet player

or playing in a great symphony orchestra when I grew up,

and the feeling that I had when I held that fucking thing

to my lips and blew on it

was like all the chaos, all the fear,

all the like hung over because it was a crazy night

and the cops came to my house

and my stepdad just shooting at them

and threatening to kill himself,

like all this stuff all disappeared.

(sirens wailing)

And in that moment of playing,

and like when I felt like I made a beautiful sound,

it was like, in that moment, everything was all right.

(trumpet music)

I'll never forget. I was like 18.

And at 18, you are allowed to do night shift at the factory.

Night shift meant you got double wages.

Okay?

And it was four nights a week

and it was from nine o'clock at night

until something the next morning.

I was walking in with me little hopper sack on

with two other guys.

And the sun, there was actually a sunny sky

and it was setting in

and there was a big orange glow in the sky

and I stopped and looked and I'm like (sighs).

And he went, "What's wrong with you?"

And I said, "Just think about the all of the things

people are doing around the world,

and we're gonna walk into that big black hole there

and spend the night working on that shit.

And I don't want to do it."

And they just looked at me.

Mad, mad as a (indistinct) and I was.

I rather be out there than going in here,

earning double time.

In my family, music was the movement.

Music was the revolution.

You know, music was social justice

and social change and cultural.

There's a lot that went into it,

more than it just being music.

You know, when you have that moment

where it kind of clarifies who you want to be

and what you want to do and how you want to do it.

And I heard Mississippi John Hurt for the first time

and I asked my grandmother, I said,

"Grandma, who were these guys?

Who were these two guys playing?"

She's like, "No, no, it's just one guy."

You know, one thing with the thumb,

bass with the thumb, melody with the fingers.

I just, I just, that was it.

I had to do that.

How old were you? 19.

♪ You got to walk that lonesome valley ♪

♪ Well, you got to walk ♪

♪ It for yourself ♪

You know, some musicians begin to play

because they want to, you know,

be in the band and travel and see the world.

But with you, it seems like you were really

kind of born into it.

I've been playing 75 years.

And I learned off the road,

the road taught me how to live.

(upbeat music)

Well, my name is Charles Gabriel.

I'm from to the city of New Orleans,

the great city of New Orleans.

And my grandfather was born in New Orleans

and he was a cornet player.

And he had The National the jazz band in 1920.

And my father born in New Orleans too

and he was a drummer and my father had five boys,

five of us and five girls.

And my mother and them decided to go to Detroit in 1941.

My dad told my mother, he said,

"You can to take them all to Detroit

but you can't take Charlie, 'cause I'm teaching Charlie."

Because he was teaching me about seven years

before I was able to go to Detroit

and join the rest of my family.

And that's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to become a musician.

I prayed to God that I can become a musician

to qualify to play music anywhere in the universe.

To me it was it was just normal.

DAVE: When did you become a musician?

That's hopefully in a couple of years from now.

We're very close.

There may be actually a record deal around the corner

which could make this Metallic thing really take off.

I know some people, just so you know.

Every Thursday there was three hours of learning

about religion and about history,

religious history in the Danish school

so we would go to the Lutheran church

down the street from the school.

And I remember clearly the priest

going through everybody and talking to them about

what they imagined their future being.

And sitting there, when it was my turn,

I said, "I don't know what I'm gonna do,

but I know it's gonna involve traveling

and it's not gonna be something that's stationary."

(upbeat music)

DAVE: When did you move to America?

I was 17.

I put an ad in The Recycler and I said,

"Drummer, looking for other people to perform

hard rock heavy metal band with."

And then about six months later, I got a call

from a guy named James Hetfield.

We became friends.

When we became friends and he sort of got bit

by the new wave of British heavy metal bug also,

I mean, he was into Aerosmith and Scorpions and Judas Priest

and Iron Maiden and so on,

but he didn't really know

about Hollow Ground, about Sledgehammer.

And so when we've gone into all that stuff

he got sort of obsessed with it also.

And then it was like, what can we do?

And maybe we should start writing our own songs

and all that started happening.

DAVE: Is this the only band you've really ever been in?

Metallica's the only band I've ever been in, yes.

(Dave laughing)

What a dick.

How many years have you been together?

Well,

if you count the earlier years,

it's over 40 years.

Yeah. It's a long time.

It's like a fucking arranged marriage.

(The Edge laughing)

What the fuck. Yeah.

How long before you actually got in front of people

and played a song?

We were probably a year,

I would think, or certainly the guts of a year

before we had the courage to play in front of anyone.

And it was a small gig in the gymnasium of the school.

Having like argued for ages

about what we were gonna play,

we ended up voting for a song that Bono sang the best

which was a Peter Frampton song of all things.

"Show Me the Way."

♪ I wonder how you're feeling ♪

♪ There's ringing in my ears ♪

So we played "Show Me the Way" and Bono nailed it.

He's sang it really well

and we kind of played in tune and in time

and the whole gymnasium went completely bezerk.

And I think that was kind of the light went on

pretty much at that moment.

Everyone just went wow.

No one really picks up a guitar and says,

"I want a million dollar record contract."

You pick up a guitar and yeah, it'd be great

to be able to feed your pie hole

but people are responding to the relationship

you have with yourself, your own soul

and how it reflects to them.

And they're responding to the connection

and commitment to the sound you're making.

The next logical step is

you put a band together

and get in a van.

And go out and conquer the world.

(upbeat music)

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ Well, we've been to London and we've been to LA ♪

♪ Spain, New Zealand, and the USA ♪

♪ Touring, touring, is never boring ♪

♪ Touring, touring, is never boring ♪

♪ Touring, touring, is never boring ♪

♪ Touring, touring, oh baby, touring ♪

DAVE: Every band story is unique

but on some level they're all the same.

It's about connection.

What were some of the first gigs like?

Well, our first gig ever actually

a band dropped off of a Fishbone gig in Kansas.

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Oh ♪

You say it!

The first gig ever was super big and awesome.

We were like, "Whoa, we gotta book another gig like now.

We're huge. Let's do this.

And then next gig, fucking like five people, you know?

It was like the best because then you never gave up

because you're like, dude,

'cause it can be that first show.

That show kind of showed us that, you know,

we could get to there someday.

Like for real, you know.

The few shows after that was like oh,

back to reality.

(upbeat rock music)

Touring is hard. Mm-hmm.

But you just can't find anything

like pulling into a truck stop at three in the morning.

There's no way.

Also touring is such a necessity now

because it's the only real exposure you can get.

(soft music)

MAN: Load in at two o'clock.

DAVE: You know, when you're young

and you pick up an instrument for the first time,

you really don't imagine that someday

you'll be the one writing the songs

and you'll be the one traveling the country or the world

sharing your music with other people.

What song are you gonna open with tonight?

DAVE: Uh, I don't know the name of it.

What's the name? Oh, I'm sorry.

DAVE: But then once you start sharing it

with other people

and you see the joy that it brings

and you see the love and everyone singing along

and dancing, and that becomes your mission.

The connection to the audience becomes your mission.

(audience cheering)

We're the Foo Fighters.

This is the first show of our tour.

And we're gonna do a song that we wrote three ago.

To kick off our first part of the tour.

It's called "My Hero."

(upbeat music)

It's one of the reasons why I still have the first van

that the Foo Fighters toured in.

I'm thankful that I had those experiences

just trying to get the gear up on stage,

be the best band anyone's ever seen,

get it back in the van and make it to the next city.

♪ There goes my hero ♪

♪ Watch him as he goes ♪

Because there's no guarantee

that it will ever pay off.

The reward has to be the experience.

Without there being any career aspiration,

why on earth would you do it?

It's a drive to see other places

and have different experiences.

I mean, I think that was part of American culture.

That was one of the really great things

that was handed down to us was this idea

that you could go hitchhike, you could go on a bus,

you could go do all this stuff

and see other parts of America

which were different than where you grew up.

So I'm in a band.

What would you say I would have to do to make it?

How many thousands of times have you heard that?

What's the answer?

Well, you gotta, which will be very hard to do nowadays,

but you got to play clubs until you can't anymore.

Because you played clubs,

not until you didn't want to,

you had to until you got good.

I will still to this day talk to the band and go,

"You guys, we have to have a meeting together.

Stop bullshit phone and lawyers,

we gotta just get together."

Because that's what this was.

We would talk about the show afterwards,

you ride down the road and suddenly it's fucking snowing.

This is what we had.

Look at those.

Those are the windshield wipers.

The fuck.

You have to pound the payment.

You have to put in the miles.

There's no way to recreate

or even initially create that type of momentum

without getting behind the wheel of a vehicle.

What used to be our Thomas Guide

is now just a push of a button, right?

But you still have to follow directions,

follow instructions to get to where you're going.

I mean, nobody would ever want to get in a van

with their families and drive for 20 minutes, right?

But here you are and here we are

getting in a Ford Econoline van

and setting sail

with complete strangers.

For that moment,

that is the dream.

(upbeat music)

You're pirates.

Like you're fucking pirates and you have

decided that this is gonna be your life

and you don't see any other alternatives.

It's not like, well, I'll do this for a little bit

before I start my data entry job

it really was like a clear delineation of like okay,

you're a freak and you're choosing a crazy thing.

And this is the straight life over here and you swerved.

♪ How can anybody have you ♪

♪ How can anybody have you and lose you ♪

♪ How can anybody have you and lose you ♪

♪ And not lose their minds, too ♪

By week four or week five, or sometimes even day five,

you just get this sort of tour crazies where

you are part zombie from the routine,

like a cooped up little kid

because you've been sitting for eight hours

or whatever in the van so you just

want to freak out.

And it helps.

It helps to have people you can freak out with.

I think a lot of the attraction

to doing this was the unknown.

Just not knowing. You know?

You grow up, you live your life

with certain responsibilities and rules and routines.

This to me seemed like it just went against all of that.

That you're free.

You know?

When the Foo Fighters first started as a band,

anyone that interviewed us

really just wanted to talk about our past.

INTERVIEWER: The impetus to create some stuff

was not stemming at all from Kurt's death

but it was actually stemming

from the fact that Nirvana broke up.

DAVE: Shit, it's a surprise when anyone commits suicide

even if they say they're gonna do it, look at Darby.

Yeah.

Yeah. (laughing)

DAVE: What? What was that?

Just yeah, I'm not interested in this part.

And did you look at sitting at home

was a period of mourning kind of thing

and then then Foo Fighters is it now.

Well, of course, but yeah.

Yeah, sure.

We kind of felt like we needed to have some experiences

of our own, you know,

go out and do stuff.

So,

the van just made perfect sense.

We went on our first tour.

It was, I mean, it was bare bones.

It wasn't, there was no

rock royalty superstar review.

I mean, it was like,

we were hurting, you know?

Look at Pat's feet! Disgusting.

DAVE: Oh!

What?

(upbeat rock music)

Getting the big dick?

That's the room, that's the room penis, right there.

No way. That was the room penis.

WOMAN: Hi. (laughing)

Anything- Let's get the boys

changing now.

Yeah, let's get the boys-

Hi, I've got to put on some dry clothes.

WOMAN: Okay, Dave, we'll let you have some privacy. Okay.

PAT: Oh, it's like kitchen is open.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Can I have a bite?

Rock over London, rock on Chicago.

Choosy mothers choose Jif.

I like how the stools are really small.

I like that, that's great.

Shooting the breeze kind of this?

Yeah. Well, dude.

You're social.

What?

Driving around the Midwest and-

Actually Tanya Tucker's tour bus From the 80s.

We hustled into a van.

I've never been in a band where somebody

loaded your gear for you and set your shit up.

But they had spray painted their van silver,

remember that?

His car broke, he had to borrow mine.

But could you guys imagine

if we would have started,

done the first tour in a bus

how different it would have been?

I think it goes back to everything that you said

that we had just become a band and had we done that,

we probably never would have made it through the first year.

To this day, we'll get off the rental jet,

the van with wings and we all still cram

in the same fucking van so it's...

Pat.

Did you ever tour in a van before the Foo Fighters?

No.

My first band tour with you guys.

So when you joined Nirvana,

that was first time you'd ever gone on tour?

That was my first tour ever.

Red delicious, you got your ears on?

That's a big 10-4, big buddy.

Germs did a couple our of town shows,

which was like packing our shit

in Chris Ashford's two-door Buick Skylark,

you know, drums and the amp.

All we had was a bass amp, a drum set,

and a bass with no case.

And all of us people crammed in there

and we'd drive to San Francisco or San Diego or whatever.

You didn't bring a guitar?

I didn't have a guitar, but then eventually...

(laughing)

Or an amp, so it made it easier

to cram it all into a Buick Skylark.

♪ Give me, give me this ♪

♪ Give me, give me that ♪

♪ Give me it, now ♪

♪ Give me it ♪

None of us in the bands

had even a thought of going and doing it somewhere.

And it wasn't till I remember Black Flag

started doing it more, like you can do that?

Like you can go around the country and play gigs everywhere?

I just figured

because every one of my bands sucked so bad,

why would I want to take that anywhere else

and make anyone else have to listen to that?

I had no idea that-

That anyone would even want to see it, right?

Like why would we go to another state?

They don't know us, they don't wanna see us.

Yeah, and I just didn't even know

that the network existed.

Do you wanna hear my take on

the American punk touring network

and the vans that followed it?

Okay.

Band number one, D.O.A.

(upbeat rock music)

1979, D.O.A. from Vancouver, Canada,

they wanted to go play.

Okay, so D.O.A. was the first band to tour.

First band that had a band that had a band.

IAN: They were connected

to the Youth International Party.

They then knew that (indistinct) so they booked a tour

for D.O.A. that took them around the country in 1979

including here in Washington at Madam's Organ.

They did the circuit.

They go through LA, they meet Black Flag.

And then they're like, "You got to come to Vancouver."

So Black Flag makes their way up.

They play San Francisco, maybe Portland, Seattle, Vancouver.

And they meet up with the D.O.A. guys.

And Bukowski sits down with him and says,

"Can I get your numbers?"

DURR: It was a sheet.

And it had all the clubs you could play.

had the guy's number who ran the club.

It had like another number

like a punk rock house you could crash at.

So then he starts booking a tour

and he's exhaustively,

they start booking and booking.

And they're gonna do a trip from LA to San Francisco.

They're gonna stop in San Luis Obispo.

They're gonna just fill in the blanks.

They were going to for coverage.

And Black Flag, their first trip across,

they just played so many places nobody went.

They did all the gig, the dates they could find

that were D.O.A., but then they started filling them in.

Then they would get back to LA

and they'd just turn around

and go out and do their B tour.

They just go round and round,

but the whole time they were developing

like this network.

D.O.A. came in with the hatchets.

And Black Flag came in with like the steamer.

(upbeat music)

I don't wanna sound like I'm blowing smoke up their ass,

but them guys, man.

I mean, a lot of what I'm doing, I owe them.

They had a different idea.

The Flag guys were very much a do it kind of thing.

You would not believe what college radio

was like in them days.

College radio was so terrible,

but then they had a big switch

and all of a sudden every DJ had their own show

and no playlist.

But it wasn't like that beginning, man.

Punk wasn't really a college thing for awhile.

Touring the college circuit,

a lot of that was through the college radio circuit

who were playing punk rock

and so those where the connections could be made

so those were the towns,

so they were developing this network.

The gig seemed like that was the most control you had,

that situation.

All the 23 hours it took to get to there, wherever,

for that one hour, the gig.

So everything else is a flyer, putting out records,

having a band, you know, put up a name.

all this stuff is to get people to the gig.

Black Flag!

(upbeat rock music)

To be a punk rocker was like doing everything

you could to express yourself.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Look at me, I look at you ♪

♪ What the fuck you gonna do ♪

When I first joined Scream, I think I was 17

or had just turned 18 years old.

They were an established band in Washington, DC,

in Virginia, in America.

They were kind of one of those early American

punk rock bands that traveled.

I had looked at all these pictures on album sleeves

of punk rock bands

with their sleeping bags and all their equipment

in a van and unloading into a club out of the van.

And that to me

just seemed like a dream.

Vans became sort of the central mode for all the bands.

You lived in your van.

I wanted to be with people

that wanted to make music, record

and get in the van and go experience the world.

The physicality of being in places,

not just hearing about it.

Your own first person take on it.

There's nothing like it.

I think it's great for the band in the van

because you get to know each other, you know,

you're locked in.

You know, I think that was part of us coming together

as the song says.

You look at this van

and it's like having a newborn baby or something,

like the amount of like optimism, the possibilities,

the infinite things that we can get in this thing

and we can go anywhere.

We can load all our shit in here, our drums,

our amps, all our shit and go.

I have been able to live a life

where you could just play music with your friends

in front of people and travel around and do it.

It was like here's the golden ticket to Oz.

Here's the fucking golden brick pathway.

Your life is set.

Your winning.

(audience cheering)

(upbeat rock music)

DAVE: Well, I mean, at this point in your life,

like were you just going out to just go fucking have fun?

Were you aspiring to be like a famous musician?

Were you just throwing everything...

I was just being a punk.

It never occurred to me to be famous or to be rich

or to think about it as a job.

It's sort of like this would, we gotta go,

I just wanted to meet the people.

I wanted to go, I wanted to see what was out there.

You have to know like, Rollins and I, in 1978

we took a Greyhound Bus to California just go skateboarding.

I was 16, he was 17.

So we were just like, go, just go, go, go, go.

That was the mission, just go.

Jeff Nelson, drummer of Minor Threat

and also very eccentric, brilliant like builder.

He like got in the van, came up with a design,

a deck design.

That was also a huge part of all vans

is you've got to make a really proper design.

DAVE: You know, every band had that specific way

that they would pack the back of the van.

You had one way to get the fucking shit, it's like Tetris.

Yeah, yeah. One way

to get the shit in there.

Like everything goes in-

Yeah, I was not that guy who knew that.

(upbeat rock music)

Bands still do that?

Are they still doing that? Yes.

So how long have you had this one?

This is a rental. Yeah.

This a rental?

You gonna return it like this?

Yep. Yep. (laughing)

It's a necessity based thing

to manage the space of the van

'cause a big empty hole isn't necessarily

the most efficient way to go.

Somehow you break up the space.

Some people will go horizontally

and have the equipment in the back area.

It's a packed van.

With big fear all the way at the top.

You can't see out the back.

It's not the safest.

DAVE: All right, show me how you pack this thing.

Oh, yeah

Back in the day explain how you would pack

and load your van.

First, man, (indistinct)

you unload all the gear, man, right?

And then we take something

and we have to throw the people out

and put a mattress there

so we can have place to sleep, you see?

And then we move all the gear in there.

And microwave built and little how you say?

Loft.

Okay. Let's go for a 3000 mile trip around the country.

So how many miles are you gonna put on this

before you bring it back?

Oh man, we're gonna put probably,

probably put 6,000 on this, this trip.

Shit.

How many tours do you think you've been on at this point?

Oh my God. I don't know.

50, 60, 70, more.

More, more probably. I bet more.

Yeah. How many tours

have you done in America at this point?

US ones?

Probably more than Europe. Right?

And I know if you call a tour more than a month,

I just did 67 so maybe 35, 37?

DAVE: And this last tour?

This one was (indistinct) tour, named after my pop,

it was 45 gigs, 45 days.

That's about 13,380 miles

and I drove every one of them.

I feel so grateful to have had that experience,

to have like that have been,

like every step of the way of the Chili Peppers, you know,

it's like we did every little step, you know?

And first it was a van then we moved up to the U-Hauls

then you could lay down in the back

and you had like a little mattress back there.

You know, you could sleep with in Chad Smith's feet

in your fucking mouth.

You know what I mean?

But you'd get little shut eye, you know?

And then, you know, then we moved to the mobile home

and that was massive, the Winnebago, you know.

And then the first shitty bus with the crack head driver,

you know what I mean?

We were just driving to pick up hitchhikers

and shit on a bus.

What?

When you go out there

and there's some like weird methed out girls

in the front with the driver,

and you're like who is this?

We did the caravan of cars, personal cars, right?

We got to experience that part of the band.

Then we got to experience the 15 passenger van

with a trailer.

Then we graduated to 15 passenger van

with a cargo van.

Then we graduate to the one bus, band and crew.

Then you graduate to two buses,

the band on one bus, the crew on one.

And then you graduate to everyone gets their own bus, right?

So we kind of got to experience all of that.

And it was all bit by bit by bit.

So you appreciate it.

You appreciate the fuck out of it.

That wow, I'm on my own bus.

You know?

And then when you can start taking a crap on buses,

when that change happened,

that was massive.

The Shredder. The Shredder.

DAVE: Dude, life changer.

It's a big deal. I know.

That was a big deal.

Hey, remember this?

It's a 6140 Econoline,

the original modern day van.

And here's a new original, the 7060 Econoline.

It's changing van history again.

Check it out.

It's the only van with a strong, separate frame

and they moved the engine forward 18 inches

for more freedom to move around than in any other van.

And no matter how your trick up your Ford,

there's lots of room for bags and boats

and beauties. Us?

No, these beauties.

I was taking my kids to school one day.

My daughter Harper said,

"Dad, everybody's looking at us."

And I said, "Yeah.

So why do you think that is?"

And she said, "Because all new cars look the same."

I said, "Yeah, they kind of do."

She said, "They're all gray or black or white.

There's no colorful cars anymore

and they're all kind of the same shape."

And she was right.

But there was something about the style

and the progression of style that vans went through

from the 50 utility vehicles to the 60s

to the family vans, to the 70s, super 70 van culture.

They were such cool looking machines and you know,

there's something about

that aesthetic where when you're driving something

that has style, it's like, you know,

it's like wearing a suit.

You can tell a lot about a person

by what kind of van that drive.

Like this piece of shit.

AUDIENCE: Slayer! Slayer! Slayer! Slayer!

DAVE: At what point did you guys

start to travel out of town?

We were traveling...

I would think it was upon the release

of the first album is when we started traveling.

One of the earliest trips

I believe we drove our own vehicles

up to San Francisco.

We just did a couple of shows, one at Ruthie's,

one at The Stone.

DAVE: Did you guys think

that you were going to be a huge band?

No, but I knew there was some special.

We were attracting fans.

People were interested.

And we were slowly beginning to have a little following,

especially the clubs playing in Orange County.

It was cool because people were shocked

when they saw us.

(upbeat rock music)

(man screaming)

MAN: Slayer!

We were fearless.

You know, we were just living life and enjoying it.

What it came down to was we were like, we were Slayer.

We felt like we had this kind of edge on everybody else,

on every other band there.

And it felt awesome.

(audience cheering)

(upbeat rock music)

What is it that makes someone

want to just jump in the van with all of their friends

and disappear for a couple months?

Yeah, I think it's just about like fun.

Like you don't, it's also not knowing what could happen.

Like it could either be this amazing thing

or it's gonna be a total train wreck,

but even with when we've been on tour

and there's like train wreck terrible moments

and terrible stories, we laugh about it later.

(upbeat rock music)

God, the fucking days of being like oh yeah,

somebody's out of town in this like Philly row house,

and there's like a bed free

and you just find yourself sleeping

in just some random gross bed with like dirty sheets.

(laughing)

But it was great.

This was like, I'm fucking living.

This is rad.

I'm in Philadelphia.

The third band in 92,

we went out and started doing like the Midwest.

And I remember we played in Oxford, Mississippi

and there was like seven of us on stage

and no tickets sold to the show.

Zero, no one's gonna be there.

So Adrian met some girls at the motel

and invited them to show up on us.

So they came and so there was like four of 'em.

So there's four people watching the seven of us on stage.

There's more people on stage than in the audience

and it was such a small little bar

that like we would literally take turns

going in the audience to balance out

like how many people were on stage

and how many people were watching the band

or we watching ourselves.

Fucking awesome numbers.

(rain clattering)

Yeah! Yeah! Oh, I got it!

DAVE: You never got into an accident

or anything in your van, did you?

I've almost died.

I never got into an accident, but there was,

we were driving from, I think somewhere in Ohio,

through West Virginia

and it was winter time.

We hit black ice and I'm driving,

I'm listening to,

we're listening to Voivod.

"War and Pain", never forget, you know.

And all of a sudden.

Bam, it was hilarious, man.

I remember I hit my head and I kind of,

it just went black for a little bit.

And I opened my eyes, like oh man, what's going on?

The car just starts spinning.

I'm like oh shit.

I lost control. There's nothing I could do.

Music's off.

Everybody's sat up, you know,

truly white knuckling the whole experience.

It was an hour.

I'm just driving along and then suddenly

seeing a dead piglet on the side of the road.

I'm like, "What the fuck?"

And then I can a couple,

maybe few seconds later, another one.

I was like, "What happened?

Why are these little dead piglets here?"

We're asleep on a mattress in the back of the van.

We ended up driving straight

into an East German military facility.

There was all these truckers high on speed

and we said we needed to get to Seattle.

And all the lads were out with their machine guns and dogs

and looking for passports from the driver and then-

There was this topless girl in Detroit.

She took her leg off and put a rose in it

and there's a picture of it.

You know what?

It's just how we live. Right?

And I realized at some point they were sandbags

and I was tripping my fucking brains out

because I was exhausted.

I hadn't slept.

For the whole time I kept thinking these are dead piglets

every, who put a dead piglet every 50 yards?

(laughing)

DAVE: What the fuck else in the world would drive you

to such lengths to do anything?

Got to get to the gig, man. Yeah.

Being in a van is basic survival.

(laughing)

You know?

Like someone's gonna have to learn to build a fire.

You get to be really, really close with people,

like close in a way that other fucking coworkers

at the bank couldn't possibly know.

It's not that glamorous to talk about

but it really takes like a kind of immaturity

and innocence to be on the road in a van

but also a type of maturity where you can really tolerate,

see a bigger picture, have patience, exercise kindness

to your fellows who might be having issues

because when you're in a group

and you're in close quarters, anything that's going on,

the group knows, it's a group problem.

We've had band members who've lost loved ones early on

and were in the van.

We've had people with drug problems

getting clean in the van.

We've had people who were clean

having drug problems in the van.

It was really like I have to deal with today.

And that's what the van kind of meant for me.

You become each other's support group

in so many different ways.

In some really crucial times in your life, you know?

MAN: We got DH here.

I'm the bow legged brother

that you'll never be another.

And I still shoot soon.

(screaming)

DAVE: At what point did you start getting high?

I think it started with rock and roll.

(laughing)

15. I think I was 15.

I had a couple of beers and I was like woo! Wow!

DAVE: And was there alcoholism in the family?

It's weird because I never met my biological father

but the father I grew up with definitely an alcoholic.

Yeah, I mean, he would drink and get drunk at night

and come into my room and stick a shotgun in my face

and fucking ask me if I was a man.

And that was a typical Friday night.

"What the fuck, you a man?" You know?

And he was just, he was just, he was a drunk.

He was a periodic drunk

because he stayed drunk for like the weekend,

and then he was a social worker throughout the week.

(upbeat rock music)

DAVE: So you hit the road with the Dead Kennedy's

but you hadn't really traveled at that point?

I hadn't, no, I hadn't been anywhere.

My first gig was in Sacramento

and we went across the US

and we hit the road and fucking people just want to kill you

for the color of your skin.

It's insane. It was crazy.

Everybody's got a right to free speech.

(audience cheering)

And this song is about the fucking rednecks

and the fucking jocks

who bring in their bullshit macho attitudes to these shows,

try to wreck 'em

by starting fights,

spreading around their bullshit racist attitudes.

And that just fueled my alcoholism.

I'm not gonna say that that pushed me into it,

but it was quite a nudge

because then I didn't talk as much to people

about like what's going on internally

or I definitely didn't talk to anybody in the band.

Like, "Hey man, you know, I feel scared."

You know?

I didn't know you could do that.

Nazi Redneck assholes fuck off.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Nazi punks, Nazi punks ♪

♪ Nazi punks, fuck off ♪

♪ Nazi punks, Nazi punks ♪

♪ Nazi punks, fuck off ♪

DAVE: Okay. So the Dead Kennedy's are done.

Mm-hmm.

DAVE: And now where does your life go?

I moved to Los Angeles, California

and we got nothing going on.

So I'm drinking the morning, drinking in the afternoon.

Then I joined the Chili Peppers.

And then that was like trying to hide this facade,

this guy where I'm trying to hide my addiction.

♪ In 1819, we took a little trip ♪

♪ We went on down to the mighty Mississippi ♪

♪ We got a little drunk and we got a little wine ♪

♪ Next thing you know, I was Chili Pepper ♪

♪ Chilling and cooling so fine ♪

♪ Fine ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

So I just really leaned into it

and started fucking shooting dope heavy.

Like then it was just like nothing mattered.

And it started a whirlwind of shit.

Now I'm selling shit.

Sold the van.

I had motorcycle, van, classic guitars, muscle car.

I just sold everything.

I just didn't give a shit anymore.

I started getting fucking all these abscesses

and I went up in the hospital.

This is the first one, it's about

it's on my hip, it's about big as your,

yeah, like my fist.

You can see that and you can see the whole,

like you can see your whole hip socket.

The skin has started to fall away and like getting rotted

and necrotic and just shit was falling out.

Like I was really playing in this band, bass, and

literally a piece of, a chunk of meat just fell

down my leg and fell out of my pants and on the floor.

They were like, "Dude, you need to go to the hospital."

So, I kept bullshitting around.

I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah."

And I would just wake up in these pools of blood

with my pants soaked and and just all fucked up.

Yeah, it ended.

Shit, the dope just took over.

And I would think about that, I would go, yeah.

Wow. That was some times,

a lot of times and a lot of years

where I didn't have this food to eat,

like I literally wouldn't, I just didn't eat

because I didn't have no money, I didn't have food,

I spent all the money on dope

or I'd be in a homeless shelter

thinking that I'm a rock star.

I used to be a rockstar.

What the fuck has happened?

What the fuck has happened now?

Now I'm just a fucking homeless piece of shit

with the rest of these guys, you know?

So it was, ooh, it was a mixed bag.

DAVE: How you doing?

(DH laughing)

Ugh!

I never been better and I never had more.

It's not as much as the struggle, because

I gave up the fight.

But to me, this is all winning.

And I do nothing but really help people

more stay sober than not,

because it just helps me

because I see new people come in

and I know where they've been,

and I know how it feels,

and I know how it feels to have somebody to reach out

and say, "Hey, man, you all right?

Let's get a coffee."

Like nobody was saying that shit.

Nobody was saying, "Hey, let's go have coffee.

Let's go see a movie, let's go hang out."

I discovered along with my spirituality this whole sense

of love ,

and self-love and

love for just fucking mankind.

I remember just getting sober

and everything looks so fresh.

So fresh and so new

and it's like hitting a restart on your computer.

DAVE: Do you love yourself a little more now?

A little more.

I love me a little more.

(laughing)

♪ I love you, baby ♪

♪ But you gotta understand ♪

♪ When the Lord made me ♪

♪ He made a ramblin' man ♪

What those close quarters do

for the comradery of the band.

It can do one of two things.

It can fucking make you wanna kill each other

or it makes you, you know, tight like a family.

Well, it's both.

Kind of like a family that wants to kill each other

is pretty much okay, so if you're in a van

and someone's annoying you,

you have to get over it because you can't escape it.

It's like a marriage of multiple people,

which in my experience means it's really hard

to keep on the same track forever.

I mean, you go through it together and it's hard.

You go through a lot of shit

that you don't really think about at the time,

but in hindsight, yeah, you survived that together.

So it definitely is a bonding thing

that you don't even realize that's happening.

It was incredible.

It was an ultimate dream for me.

I had all that discomfort of like getting some weird rash

because I'd been sweating on a the stage going crazy

and then you don't shower for six days

and then the van and everyone's stinks

and you're fighting and shitting your pants

and eating the worst food you could ever imagine.

It's heaven, it's fucking paradise,

it's the greatest thing you could ever do.

I just felt like we were just like a roaming

band of gypsies.

We show up and we rock you.

♪ Rock you ♪

You know, we get out of the world

and we play "Get Up and Jump"

and "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes"

and we fucking we do it with every fiber of our being

as hard as we can every night and it means everything.

You know what was crazy?

We always drove home.

We never stayed in a motel or in a tent.

We drove home and then we got in the van the next day

and went to the next gig.

We were driving from London.

It's like the coldest day ever in Britain,

coldest night in Britain, freezing cold, snowing.

Just the worst.

And the windshield went and it had the bench seat.

And so we laid on top of each other, The Beatles.

And if you got to the top, you had a slug of whiskey

and then you moved your way down again

and the next one had a slug

and that's how we got back home without freezing to death.

And you think, ah, you know, that's how it is.

(man speaking indistinctly)

DAVE: What was it like to be stuck

in a fucking little van

with the same four or five dudes for two and half months?

(laughing)

Well, I mean, you know, it's like a little tribe

of nomads running around.

I think it's one of the funnest things you can do.

Being in a gang, in a band, in a collective,

in a commune, in a group, whatever fucking word

you want to attach to it,

just being with other people and sharing that experience

with other people, that was paramount to anything.

Ill never forget there was a guy in the band who,

I don't know if he had food poisoning or something

but he was farting the most like noxious,

like make you want to puke farts.

And that's just how you live.

This is just like, I guess this is my new reality is I,

I sit in a fart van. (laughing)

And get to Baltimore and play for the bar staff.

Like it was awesome. (laughing)

DAVE: Did you know that the Beatles fart?

No.

If you fart, admit it.

(laughing)

in the van, because it causes so much trouble.

You know, eating curry and then the flatulence

which followed in the van,

the fucking pong, get the fuck.

We had to put the windscreen wipers on,

sometimes they were that bad.

And you know when you get fallen over laughter fit

where you're on the floor just giggling?

They're so rare.

And they're sort of special,

a lot of people it's never happened to,

it's never happen to them.

MAN: We got levels here, you ready?

♪ Hey, don't let it go to waste ♪

(guys laughing)

♪ But I hate the taste ♪

♪ Weight keepin' me ♪

(guys laughing)

When you get that full done laughing feeling

and everybody's in,

you can't even start a word before the,

you know, everybody's back down again.

Fucking magic.

Oh my God, Anthony.

Oh my God.

Take the fucking picture.

Oh!

When you're in a band,

especially like you're in a van,

like you know, everyone's pissing you off,

but you really fall in love with everyone too.

You know?

And you show up and it's just that feeling of like,

you know, we're gonna fucking explode.

Like we're gonna up there and I'm gonna go up there

and I'm gonna explode, you know?

'Cause I know this like tense boiled,

this ball, tightly coiled up inside of me all my life.

And it was like all of a sudden I found a way

where, you know, 'cause I had felt in so many ways

growing up like lesser than

and I was always small and little and skinny

and I was scared of girls and I was weird

and like a jazz nerd and you know what I mean?

Like but I found this thing and it was a place

where not only like all this like tension inside me,

that I could release it,

but also that I was discovering myself,

I was discovering my identity.

And I realize it not only was like selfish,

like I'm able to release all this stuff,

but I was looking at people

who are right there in front of me and they were happy.

When we were doing those van tours,

it was us against the world.

So we would hit the stage in between

those fucking long drives.

And even if we're playing for 10 people or 15 people

or 30 people,

you just hit the stage and it's like this is what I do.

This is what we do together.

You're waiting for those moments.

I always say like life is just waiting for those moments

to get back on stage.

Everything else is kind of passing the time.

(audience cheering)

(bell dinging)

DAVE: And you get on stage now

do you still get the same feeling you had

the first time that you got on stage?

Yeah, absolutely.

You can't be in a rock and roll band and say,

"Well, I've got three gigs this weekend.

I'll take it easy tonight and save me energy."

You can't, it's impossible.

You have to go till your throat's dead.

You know?

And even then, make an attempt.

And the crowd love you all the more for it

'cause you're not giving up or wimping out.

You go on with it otherwise it's not rock and roll anymore.

It's somebody attempting to be rock and roll.

Growing up, like going to see a band live

was the way you connected with them.

Now you can connect with them in so many different ways

and everyone's connecting with so many different things.

It's all just like, there's so much stuff going on.

I just think it's just, it's changed so much.

So now there's a lot of live streaming

and you can watch concerts at home.

You don't have to go to a fucking concert.

I not only accept the technology and where it's gone,

but I actually love it.

(upbeat rock music)

It's a completely different playing field now.

There's so many different ways of trying to see

if this new sort of,

with the way the technology's working out

to get it to hit an audience, to make it work.

You know?

It like started with like you listen to one thing

from your parents and then there's YouTube,

which is like you go down

and you can see every concert from like 1977 or whatever.

And then it branches off

and you find out-

Other bands. Other bands yourself.

But it just makes you want to be there.

♪ Fire ♪

♪ To begin whipping dance of the dead ♪

♪ Blackened is the end ♪

♪ To begin whipping dance of the dead ♪

♪ Fire ♪

♪ Is the outcome of hypocrisy ♪

♪ Darkest potency ♪

♪ In the exit of humanity ♪

♪ Color our world blackened ♪

♪ Blackened ♪

Music can change the world in some way.

Maybe if it's on an individual basis,

just a couple of people,

but it will actually change somebody

and it did in my case.

(audience cheering)

Ladies and gentlemen!

A warm welcome please from Dublin, Ireland, U2!

(audience cheering)

THE EDGE: This connection with the live audience-

Good evening!

Really taught us everything we just know

about being in a band.

Without the experience of growing up

playing small little clubs and learning how to do it,

I don't think our band would've made it.

I don't think it would be anything like it is now.

(upbeat rock music)

You can't put it in words what the energy,

it's a whole different thing that you can't describe

when you're actually watching a band that you love

in the room versus watching in on screen.

It's just a different experience as we know.

What happens in your ears,

what happens through your eyes,

what happens to your body

in that energy in the room, right?

It's just, it's a completely different experience

that I'm so grateful that I got to see all these bands

for so many years.

All these bands that I love so much.

You say, one, two, three. Do it!

AUDIENCE: One, two, three!

(upbeat rock music)

To have people, to see people singing

songs that we wrote in the studio

and because we were in a good mood and having a good time,

that's so great.

I think that's the (indistinct) for me.

♪ Yeah ♪

(audience singing)

Who've I've become by not growing up

is much bigger than anyone's ever become growing up.

Do you ever think that sometimes

when you're playing on stage,

I can't believe I'm getting paid for this right now?

Every- Like this is-

Everyday.

(audience singing)

Okay.

(upbeat rock music)

Guess what?

This is exactly what I fucking hoped would happen right now.

(audience cheering)

Dan, light 'em up, I got to see 'em.

Hey, Glastonbury!

Hey!

Thank you so much, you guys,

it's a been a beautiful evening.

(audience cheering)

I remember the great shows that I've been to.

They changed my life, you know?

The Clash changed my life.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Darling, you got to let me know ♪

♪ Should I stay or should I go ♪

You see a lot of acts that are just taking

what they did in the studio

and leading that to a stage

and expecting that that's going to work and it doesn't.

So there's something about the live concerts that, you know,

the honesty of it that you can't hide.

That is the reason I think that people go to shows.

♪ Hello, hello ♪

♪ Hola ♪

♪ I'm at a place called Vertigo ♪

They don't go to shows

to hear the music they hear on the radio.

They want to see something different

and something compelling, something that is going to connect

with them in a deep way.

And I think the best acts do that,

but they're the ones that have paid their dues.

(upbeat rock music)

I wanna hear you sing!

♪ There goes my hero ♪

♪ Watch him as he goes ♪

That's what we are.

We share are love through music.

♪ There goes my hero ♪

♪ He's ordinary ♪

It's satisfying.

Something deep in my soul that helps me

live. ♪ There goes my hero ♪

♪ Watch him as he goes ♪

It's 2019 and the biggest rock bands in the world,

all the same biggest rock bands in the world

that were, you know, 1999 or 1989, you know,

Guns and Roses and AC/DC

and Iron Maiden and Aerosmith and you guys and us and so on.

I mean, that's the fucking crazy thing.

And so I think there's a whole bunch of conversations about

why has that not changed?

It's funny because Thom Yorke

brought that point up to me as well.

DAVE: What is that?

Well, he just said it was like,

'cause there's so few of us left

that can go play big places all over the world, right?

We can go fill up arenas, stadiums, all over the fucking.

At a certain point, like in the 90s

or late 90s or something, it's like they put up a big fence

or they drew a line or made a big wall

and all of us that were on one side of the wall

got to do it for the rest of our lives,

and no one else can come in.

And has anyone else come in, in 20 years? Rock band?

Is there one?

I mean, I might be missing it, but, no, right?

Why do you do this to yourself?

Why do you punish yourself that much?

Punish myself? Yeah.

You're talking about punishment.

Yeah.

I don't see the punishment.

Well, the enormous volume of music,

the enormous amount of energy that you take

and that you give.

That's not punishment. That's pleasure.

Is it pleasure? Yeah.

We're a band based on the pleasure principle.

And when I go out there

and when I go out there with my best friends

and we make beautiful music that is sacred to us,

that's nothing but ultimate glorious euphoria.

There is no pain when you're on stage,

the pain comes during life

and that's a place to fucking exorcize the pain

out of your body.

You have to want it.

You really have to want it

and you've just got to go through the tough times

because it will be tough.

You're not gonna get an easy ride. That's for sure.

It's hard and it's arduous and it's fun as fuck.

When you're at a certain age

and you find something beautiful that you love,

go for it with everything you've got,

because it will serve you your entire life.

Do you ever feel like giving up and going home?

Never.

Never, never give up.

DAVE: Do you ever want to quit?

No.

That's crazy. No.

DAVE: Do you ever feel like giving up?

No.

No.

The guys I was in the van with 20 years ago

are still my band.

And I don't know if they would be

if we didn't have that experience together.

There's no greater gift

than to have your little crew

and you're in your boat, working the town.

I really love it. I really love it.

Our records have never gone out of print.

We're still this real band, still touring.

Still playing to young people or old people

and all kinds of people.

It's amazing. It's like a wow thing every night to me.

And we still tour in a van.

We have two vans now.

What is it that keeps you going?

Jazz musicians would just fucking die on stage.

There doesn't have to be an end to touring.

There doesn't have to be an end to playing.

At the end of the day,

playing music, and fucking writing songs

is what I love to do.

It's my favorite thing to do.

Like for me, the answer is, it's simple,

and it's love and that's the only answer.

DAVE: If you had advice for the next generation of kids,

because I know that you want to pass it on.

Yes.

DAVE: What would you tell the next generation?

Be sincere about what you're listening to.

And love what you're trying to do.

that's what I would tell 'em.

What you tell 'em? I'd like to know.

If we come back, will you come back?

'Cause if you come back, we'll come back.

That's the way it works.

(audience cheering)

cool.

I like that.

That means nobody has to say goodbye

'cause we'll see each other again sometime.

So we never say goodbye.

We just say this.

(upbeat rock music)

You just play till you die.

What else you gonna do?

(Dave speaking indistinctly)

Here we go! Ah!

(upbeat rock music)

It's really important to find your thing.

It might take awhile but it'll happen.

♪ Hello ♪

♪ I've waited here for you ♪

♪ Everlong ♪

♪ Tonight ♪

♪ I throw myself into ♪

♪ And out of the red ♪

♪ Out of her head ♪

Here we go!

I would just say get in a band and do it, you know?

It's the only way to make it happen.

♪ Come down and waste away with me ♪

♪ Down with me ♪

♪ Slow, how you wanted it to be ♪

♪ I'm over my head ♪

♪ Out of her head ♪

All right, here we go!

I think I would say do shows.

Get out in front of a live audience.

It's so informative

and also making that connection with an audience is,

I think that's what makes a great band.

♪ If anything could ever be this good again ♪

♪ The only thing I'll ever ask of you ♪

♪ You've got to promise not to stop when I say when ♪

♪ She sang ♪

You have to be completely committed

and willing to fucking go through hell and high water

to put it lightly.

Yeah, if you can't breathe without doing it

then you're in the right place.

Really think about it

and say am I allowing to give up everything?

How am I gear taken?

Have my guitar taken?

Lose it all for this dream.

Be yourself and brace who you are,

and the greatest tragedy that could ever be

is not singing your song that's inside you.

(audience cheering)

♪ And she sang ♪

Your connecting to the music,

you're connecting to your fellow band members

and you're connecting to the audience.

That to me, is what keeps me alive.

Are you ready!?

Let's fucking go.

Ah!

♪ If everything could ever feel this real forever ♪

♪ If anything could ever be this good again ♪

♪ The only thing I'll ever ask of you ♪

♪ You've got to promise not to stop when I say when ♪

(audience cheering)

(Dave speaking indistinctly)

(audience cheering)

You gotta get in the van

if you want to make it in this business.

(upbeat rock music)