Dave Grohl Gives Hooters Drummer a Huge Moment at Surprise Foo Fighters Show

       Listen to the audio edition here:

Last week, the Foo Fighters did something pretty damn cool, very rock and roll. On Wednesday, they announced that they’d be playing two last-minute shows—one at New York City’s Irving Plaza the following day and another on Saturday at Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, New Jersey. Tickets to the small venues were a mere $30, including fees. Naturally, there was absolute pandemonium to get those tickets. Everybody wanted to attend.

One of those in attendance at the Saturday show was none other than Hooters drummer David Uosikkinen, who went to the concert with his wife, Dallyn Pavey Uosikkinen, whom you might remember as Pierre Robert’s BFF and the subject of this 2022 true crime feature in Philly Mag. It turns out that David gave drum lessons to newish Foo Fighters drummer Ilan Rubin starting when Rubin was just 10 years old, and David wound up at the impossible-to-get-into Foo Fighters show at Rubin’s invitation.

“He taught me a lot of foundational stuff that I still use today,” Rubin texted me on Monday morning. “He’s always been a great guy and has always made the effort to come watch me play, regardless of band or instrument. I can’t say enough great things about him!”

Before the concert, David hung out backstage with Ilan, and Grohl showed up as well.

“Ilan didn’t say ‘David plays in the Hooters,'” David explains. “He introduced me as his teacher and family friend. We’re just hanging out, yakking, having a good time. I left — I said, well, I’ll talk to you guys later.”

After David went to the main concert hall with Dallyn, his former student mentioned to Grohl that David plays for the Hooters (who, by the way, play MMRBQ this Saturday, along with Alice Cooper and Godsmack). “Dave flipped out,” says David. “He said, ‘I gotta make a video for him.’ And Ilan filmed him and he sent me a video, and I got it while I was out in the house.”

Here’s that video:

If you’re allergic to watching videos, a teenage Grohl saw David playing a yellow drum set in a Hooters video on MTV in the 1980s, it inspired him to buy a yellow drum kit for himself, and Grohl went on to use that same yellow kit to record Nirvana’s Nevermind album. Music history!

“I couldn’t believe it,” David told me on Monday morning shortly before heading off to an all-day Hooters rehearsal. “I was dumbfounded by the whole thing. My sister and I were talking yesterday, and she said, ‘You know, you know never know who you’re gonna touch.’ It was really nice of that guy to do that. It was really thoughtful and blew my mind.”

Ilan Rubin playing drums behind Dave Grohl at a Foo Fighters concert earlier this year (photo via Raph PH/Flickr)

But that was just the beginning. In the middle of the concert, Grohl takes to the microphone and acknowledges David, telling the yellow drum kit story and looking all over the 2,500-person room to try to find David, who doesn’t surface, as you can see here:

Years ago, when I did one of many interviews with the late WMMR DJ Pierre Robert, I asked him what his favorite current band was, and he told me the Foo Fighters. So I asked David if he and Grohl exchanged any thoughts about Robert’s passing.

“He loved them,” David says of Pierre’s fondness for the Foo Fighters. “He was talking about how Al Pacino likes to watch drum videos, and then he got serious. And we’re talking about Pierre, and you could see that he was really touched and saddened by his loss.”

Now, it’s back to business for David, with the Hooters playing the opening day of NomComm music festival on Tuesday before heading to South Jersey for the MMRBQ. Then, next Wednesday, he plays the Philadelphia Music Alliance 2026 Walk of Fame Gala at the Kimmel Center and then his side project The Bar Band plays 118 North in Wayne that Saturday.

As for the Foo Fighters, they’re playing the Late Show with Stephen Colbert tonight, and then they’re coming to Philly for a massive summer stadium concert at the Linc on August 13th, part of their world tour. Naturally, I expected that David would be backstage there as well. Alas, the Hooters have a one-off concert in Finland that conflicts.

And that’s rock and roll.

Here’s a video of the Foo Fighters performing “My Hero” at Saturday’s show, courtesy Dallyn Pavey Uosikkinen: