Dave Grohl recalled the time he was refused entry into Pantera’s strip club after a 200-mile detour to party with Dimebag Darrell and company.

The story showed up in the second installment of Grohl's Dave’s True Stories series, which he’s posting on Instagram to keep himself busy during the coronavirus lockdown. The Pantera incident took place after a festival sometime around 1998.

“Anyone who ever had the honor to hang out with Pantera knows that it was not for the faint of heart," the Foo Fighters leader wrote. "First of all, there was never a band more welcoming, more hospitable, more down-to-earth than Pantera. … They would welcome you in, stuff a beer in your hand, a shot in your mouth and make you laugh harder than you’ve every laughed before (until you wound up barfing it all back up and having the most soul-crushing hangover of your life the next morning).”

When the time came to move on, Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul gave Grohl a card and told him, “Dude, next time you’re in Dallas, you gotta come by the Clubhouse.” Grohl’s reaction: “To my amazement (but not surprise), they had their own strip club.” Because he and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins were planning a cross-country drive together, they decided to change their plans to include a stop-off in Dallas.

On the way to their destination, Grohl realized he’d left his wallet, which he called “Fort Knox,” at a gas station hundreds of miles behind them. That made it impossible for them to get into the club.

“‘ID, please.’ The doorman stood there … waiting for me to do that old familiar ‘slap’ on the back pocket everyone does before whipping out their own trusty Fort Knox," Grohl recalled. "Shit! I looked at Taylor, eyes wide in shock. He returned my panicked expression. All the blood rushed from my face. Tears welled up in my eyes. I began to tremble with fear. … ‘I lost my wallet in Barstow, sir.’

“Silence. A long, pregnant pause that made the ice age seem like a TikTok video. Then the words I most dreaded, more than the grim reaper himself, spilled from the doorman’s sneer: ‘Sorry, bud, can’t let you in without ID.’ Taylor jumped in and pleaded, ‘But, but, but … we’re friends with Pantera!’ The man looked up with his cold, dead eyes and growled, ‘Everyone’s friends with Pantera. Sorry.’”

With his heart “broken into a thousand pieces,” Grohl said he never did meet the band in its strip club – though he got his wallet back years later because the owners of the gas station kept it for him.

“Dime and Vinnie had since passed on to the great gig in the sky, but every memory I have of them is a joyous one,” Grohl concluded. “They are missed by many, but their legacy lives on. … They would have been your friends too.”

 

Top 100 Albums of the '90s

More From Ultimate Classic Rock