Foo Fighters could easily have filled the Bell Center. Why did the band prefer to wake up the rock ghosts of the Verdun Auditorium? Because its leader Dave Grohl has a sense of history. The former Nirvana drummer’s relationship with Montreal is not new.
On December 20, 1987, it fell on Montreal, it is said, one of those storms that surprise Quebecers every year, gifted to live in denial of the inevitable return of winter.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Verdun Auditorium
Nick Farkas organized that Sunday in the former Club Soda (on Park Avenue) a show by Scream, a hardcore band from Washington, DC, which had been recruited in 1986 by a young 17-year-old drummer, Dave Grohl.
What does Nick Farkas remember? To have lost a lot of money, because the snow had confined many punk rockers to their homes. Fortunately, the members of Scream had been able to sleep in the basement of the family home of his friend and future partner in Greenland Productions, Paget Williams.
“But what I remember above all”, continues Nick Farkas, now vice-president of concerts and events at evenko, “is how upset I was, because Dave was already such a good drummer, he hit so hard, it was a machine. Usually, I look at the singer or the guitarist, but there, I had only looked at him”.
A follower of punk reciprocity, Grohl in turn welcomed his Montreal friends when they were passing through his home in Virginia, whether he was on the road or not.
Virginia, Dave’s mother, let us sleep at her house, even if Dave was not there. And I’m telling you, not every mom would have taken in a gang of guys who’ve been driving for 10 hours and haven’t taken a shower.
Nick Farkas
always wild
Dave Grohl would visit Montreal again with Scream on at least two occasions, June 9, 1989 and June 19, 1990, at Les Foufounes Électriques, before the group disbanded. He was therefore not at the Nirvana show in this same mythical bar on April 17, 1990 – Chad Channing was still officiating behind the cymbals – but was there on September 21, 1991, three days before the release of nevermindfor an evening that more Gen Xers claim to have attended than there were actually spectators in the room (around 300).
PHOTO OLI SCARFF, AGENCY FRANCE-PRESSE
Dave Grohl on stage at Glastonbury, June 23
“We were always welcomed with open arms by our extended family of weirdos and geeks. writes Dave Grohl about Montreal in his autobiography titled All my story.
The hash was good, the girls were cute and the shows were always wild […]
Dave Grohl, about Montreal in his autobiography
“When the agent of the Foo Fighters asked us if we were still doing shows at the Verdun Auditorium, I started laughing, ”says Nick Farkas, of evenko. The Darkness is the last major band to have plugged in its amps there, on June 22, 2004, the dilapidated state of the facilities making the Sud-Ouest arena less and less welcoming.
Although there is something surprising (and touching) about the request, Dave Grohl’s desire to honor his long relationship with Montreal in this way, in a relatively intimate place (4,000 seats), is part of a rich series of projects and events worthy of a man with a sense of history (hence the gaminet des Foufs that he sported on stage in 2019). He is, after all, the one to whom we owe a documentary on the legendary Sound City studios in Los Angeles (Sound City) and another on the role of a touring vehicle in the life of a band (What Drives Us).
PHOTO DENIS COURVILLE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Kurt Cobain on stage at the Verdun Auditorium, in 1993
Not to mention that his knowledge of the Quebec metropolis certainly deepened between 1999 and 2001, when he was in a relationship with Montreal musician Melissa Auf der Maur. And that Nirvana’s last visit to Montreal dates back almost exactly 30 years ago, on November 2, 1993, at the Verdun Auditorium, five months before Kurt Cobain took his own life. A group by the name of Radiohead was in town the same evening at the defunct Woodstock Bar on Saint-Laurent.
The Wild West
” This what I remember from the Auditorium de Verdun is that it sounded like hell”, says the leader of Groovy Aardvark, Vincent Peake, who lived at the Auditorium de Verdun his “first big show in life” on the 26th June 1982, that of Iron Maiden.
But it didn’t matter that it sounded ass, because unlike the Forum, there was room in the parking lot for a tailgate party. The party started early, so when you walked in, there was already a fiery buzz.
Vincent Peake
This temple of metal in the 1980s opened up in the 1990s to grunge and alternative rock. Between August 1993 and August 1996, only Pearl Jam, Lenny Kravitz, Blind Melon, Sepultura, Soundgarden, Green Day, Pantera, The Cranberries, Beastie Boys, Bad Religion and Rage Against the Machine stop there.
The renovations completed at the Verdun Auditorium in September 2021 suggest that the hall could reconnect with its golden years, although other amphitheatres, including Place Bell, now play this role of intermediate stage for major artists whose popularity justifies a large enclosure, but not yet the home of the CH.
“What comes to mind when I think back to the Verdun Auditorium is how epic it was to go. It was like an epic in the Wild West”, illustrates the former host at MusiquePlus Geneviève Borne. “It’s not that far, Verdun, but there was already an atmosphere at the exit of the metro, with the rockers walking side by side. »
The nickname she and her cameraman gave to the place? “We called it the Verdun sauna, because there was no air conditioning. We knew each time that we were going to be excruciatingly hot. We weren’t in the comfort of today’s arenas. But it was raw. It was rock. »
Foo Fighters will be at the Festival d’été de Québec on July 8 and at the Verdun Auditorium on July 10.