DAVE GROHL Credits PANTERA With Introducing Him To Crown Royal

FOO FIGHTERS frontman Dave Grohl played a four-song solo concert at Crescent Ballroom in downtown Phoenix, Arizona Friday night (February 10) in advance of Super Bowl 2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale.

The former NIRVANA drummer, who appears in a Super Bowl commercial for Crown Royal, the top-selling Canadian whiskey brand in the United States, partnered with Crown Royal for the invitation-only performance, which was meant to celebrate the hospitality and military communities while working with two of the brand's long-standing charity partners, CreatiVets and Packages From Home.

"If you're wondering why I'm here," he told the crowd, "I've had a long and fruitful relationship with Crown Royal. This goes back a long, long time. I'm talking, like, late '90s, maybe mid-'90s. We went and we hung out with this band called PANTERA a long time. If you've ever had a night with PANTERA, you won't remember it. But PANTERAloved the Crown Royal. And they got us hooked on that Crown Royal. It got to the point where we started getting the Crown Royal backstage. Then it got to the point where we started bringing that fucking Crown Royal on the stage with us. Then it got to the point where our audience knew that we loved Crown Royal loved so much that our fans actually fucking made a cape of the purple bags and sent it to us. So when we were… That record — our fourth record — has the song 'All My Life' and a bunch of shit on it. I was wearing that fucking cape while we were mixing that record. Prized possession."

Grohl's set consisted of acoustic renditions of "Times Like These", "My Hero", "Best Of You" and "Everlong".

Back in 2017, Grohl spoke to U.K.'s Planet Rock about how PANTERA was partly the inspiration for FOO FIGHTERS' "open-door policy" while making the latter band's then-new album, "Concrete And Gold", at Hollywood, California's EastWest Studios — where they drafted in pop singers Justin Timberlake and Shawn Stockman (BOYZ II MEN) to guest on the disc.

"Basically, the way the FOO FIGHTERS work, we get along with everybody," Dave explained. "For years, we've always been that band, when we get backstage at a festival, the first thing I do is I pick up a bottle of whiskey and I just walk around banging on dressing-room doors to see who's fun, to see who's cool. It could be Tricky, or it could be MUSE or it could be… whatever — I just look for pals.

He continued: "Actually, that's something I learnt from PANTERA. Back in the day, we did a show with PANTERA and we became friends and I would go see them on tour all the time. And I realized that you'd be backstage at a PANTERA show and there'd be, like, Marilyn Manson is in that corner, and Kato Kaelin is in that corner, and Britney Spears is in [that corner]… Everybody loved to hang with PANTERA. So, to me, that was the coolest thing about them — they were the sweetest people and they had this open-door policy."

Created by ad agency Anomaly and directed by Jake Scott, Grohl's Crown Royal commercial should air during the third quarter of Super Bowl LVII, which will take place later today (Sunday, February 12).

Crown Royal is one of the oldest whiskey makers in Canada. In fact, it was created by a Canadian distiller in honor of King George and Queen Elizabeth's 1939 royal tour.

Crown Royal is the second-largest spirits brands in the U.S. in retail dollar terms and fourth-largest by volume.

Crown Royal has been owned by Diageo since 2000, when Seagram was bought out and dismantled.