That story has everything: Justin Timberlake begging to be on a Foo Fighters album, dudes in their 30s and 40s getting drunk outside when they could just as easily go to a bar, some jokey arrogance from Dave Grohl. It's great. But it's got nothing on any word that leaves the mouth of Virginia Hanlon Grohl, Dave's mother. She is 79 years old and she spends a lot of her time just razzing people for fun. Take, for example, her opinions on hard-working musicians.Then there was the day Justin Timberlake dropped by. He listened to what the Foos were doing and liked what he heard, and pretty soon he and Grohl were hanging out regularly. "We'd drink whiskey in the parking lot," Grohl says. "He was really, really cool. Then the night before his last day, he says, 'Can I sing on your record? I don't want to push it, but – I just want to be able to tell my friends.'" So the band had him add some "la la la's" to one track. "He nailed it," Grohl says. "I'm telling you – the guy's going somewhere."
"Musicians are the most fun people," she says. "And they work harder than anyone in the world."
"Hmm," says a skeptical Grohl. "You think?"
Mrs Grohl steals the entire show, actually."They're all complete workaholics," she insists. "You. Dre. Pharrell." A pause. "Maybe not Adam Levine." Grohl cracks up.
Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney, and Boyz II Men's Shawn Stockman are all on the new Foo Fighters album. Nobody has yet explained why Virginia Hanlon Grohl doesn't have every other song to herself, just to crack jokes and tell cool stories.Follow Noisey on Twitter.Then Mrs. Grohl tells a story. "When David was born, they took me into the delivery room when it was time, and there were all these guys standing around," she says. "All new … whatever you call them when they're in the last stage of becoming doctors." Apparently these new residents had yet to see a baby delivered. "So when he was born," she says, "they all burst into applause. I didn't think about that until years later, when I had this epiphany: 'Oh, my God. That's the first sound he ever heard.'"