Remember When Dave Grohl Was Busted Drink Driving A Scooter On The Gold Coast?

Foo Fighters‘ Aussie tour kicked off in Brisbane last night and, like good friends catching up to reminisce on old times, Dave Grohl and his merry men began their Sonic Highways journey round the land Down Under by sharing a fond memory from one of their previous visits. Specifically, the 2000 Big Day Out festival.

“The day of the show, we were offered shuttles to take us down to the rock n’ roll gig,” he told the Queensland crowd. “And I said ‘Fuck that!’Let’s take our rental scooters to the fuckin’ rock show. Because what’s more rock n’ roll than a couple of guys on motorised vehicles with fucking pedals.”

It was a decision that would live on in infamy, because on the way home from that fateful Big Day Out rock show, Grohl got thrown in the slammer for scooting under the influence.

“On the way back to the hotel there was a traffic jam,” he told thousands of Foo-happy punters, north of the wall. “Up ahead, I saw a sobriety check point. But I thought, ‘you know what? I’m on a motorised vehicle with fucking pedals, how bad could it be? Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you, they threw my fuckin’ ass in jail.”

“I wound up in the Gold Coast jail, with a bunch of people from the Big Day Out show… And I had to spend the night with a fat guy in a Primus T-Shirt snoring really fuckin’ loud. But I’ll tell you… what I learned was that… Even when you think you’re OK on your motorised moped with fuckin’ pedals on it… They’re gonna get you. They are gonna fucking get you.

“So the next time you come home, and they hand you that little piece of paper on the plane that says, ‘have you ever been convicted of a crime?’, you gotta tick that fuckin’ box.”

“Which is fine! The hard part is explaining to the cop that you were drunk on a fuckin’ motorised vehicle with fuckin’ pedals. And that’s why… you’re a convicted felon”.

The crowd cheered appreciatively at Grohl’s admission of felon status, and the frontman dedicated the night’s rendition of Big Me to the “hard working police force on the Gold Coast”, for teaching him one of his “life’s greatest lessons”:

“That if you’re gonna fucking go out on a motorised scooter, and you get arrested for it, don’t spend more on your suit than you do on the fucking fine that you get in court.”

Foo Fighters put in a ripping 25-song, three-hour plus show at Suncorp, including four covers — The Faces’ Stay With Me, AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock, Rush’s Tom Sawyer and the Queen + David Bowie hit Under Pressure — and two tracks from their self-titled album, Big Me and This Is A Call.

Check pics from the show below, and for more Dave Grohl wisdom nuggets check out the rest of the Fooies’ Aussie dates here. While you’re at it, check out our 9 Foo Fighters video moments you can’t unsee, because a Foo Fighters video always makes a good day better.