When US rock band Foo Fighters hit Australia for a quick fly-in-fly-out gig at Geelong's Kardinia Park next week, it will be their 13th visit to the country.
By comparison, AC/DC, ostensibly an Australian band, has toured here four times, while even the seemingly endlessly touring Bruce Springsteen has only been Down Under five times since '95.
The reason behind the frequent Foo Fighter visits seems to be frontman Dave Grohl's love for Australia, which he has called "a rock and roll country".
But all bands say they love Australia when interviewed ahead of Aussie tours, right?
Sure, but the Foos fondness for our wide brown land seems to be something unique and covers indiscretions on scooters, trapped miners, and some extra special gigs.
'I'll stick around...'
Grohl first visited Australia as the drummer for Nirvana as part of their now-legendary 1992 tour, which featured the band at the peak of their powers, riding the world-changing wave of their classic album Nevermind.
But when Grohl brought his post-Nirvana band here for the first time in the summer of '95–'96, things were far more low-key.
Foo Fighters made their Aussie debut at the Royal Melbourne Showgrounds on December 29, 1995, as part of the one-and-done Summersault Festival, which saw the band wedged between such '90s royalty as Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Beck, Bikini Kill and Rancid.
Those lucky enough to attend the five Summersault gigs and extra sideshows in Adelaide and Perth were treated to a setlist containing almost the entire self-titled debut album, including their first singles This Is A Call, I'll Stick Around and Big Me.
The band even used a rare day off on the tour to shoot the tongue-in-cheek film clip for Big Me in Sydney.
'I'll be coming home next year...'
The second Foo Fighters record The Colour & The Shape is generally regarded as their best (despite being a painful experience to make), and the band certainly put in the hard yards to promote it, playing more than 167 shows in 16 months in 19 countries.
Almost a year into that slog, the band returned to Australia for nine sold-out headline shows at some of the country's best mid-tier venues — Melbourne's Festival Hall, Selina's Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney, Adelaide's Thebarton Theatre.
It helped give the band its first platinum record in Australia, though their third record There Is Nothing Left To Lose would sell twice as many copies here.
Foo Fighters went the extra mile to promote There Is Nothing Left To Lose in Australia, flying here a month ahead of the November 1999 release date for a week and squeezing in three quick gigs and appearances on Channel V and the short-lived ABC show The 10.30 Slot.
Three months later, they were back in Australia for their first appearance at the Big Day Out, which kicked off on the Gold Coast in January 2000.
It was there that Grohl found himself on the wrong side of the law, in one of the least "rock and roll" crimes of all time.
As Grohl put it in his recent autobiography, The Storyteller, he and Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins "rented scooters so we could buzz around town during the day, beach to beach, for the three days before our massive show at the Gold Coast Parklands".
After their Big Day Out set, which began with Grohl riding the scooter on stage to the approval of the massive crowd, he and Hawkins headed for their hotel only to hit a police drink driving checkpoint.
While Hawkins was waved past, Grohl was found to be over the limit, having imbibed "a few tins of malted beverages and a few shots of whiskey" before getting on board the scooter.
"All of those years getting away with doing the most jackass shit you could possibly imagine and never getting caught, and here I was being arrested in Australia for drunk driving on a f****** moped," he joked in his book.
Grohl was handcuffed, interviewed and thrown in a cell for a few hours before being rescued by his tour manager.
The following week, the Foo Fighter frontman returned to court where he received a fine.
While he was worried about jail time, Grohl wrote he was also concerned the matter would mess up his chances of touring Australia again, "which was the most heartbreaking prospect as Australia had become my favourite place to tour over the years".
Here's Grohl and Hawkins telling the story to 7.30:
'Is someone getting the best of you?'
Foo Fighters repeated the formula (minus the scooter arrest) in '02–'03, doing a short promo tour before their fourth album One By One came out, followed by a return to the Big Day Out.
One By One would be the first of seven consecutive studio albums to top the ARIA charts in Australia, so it wasn't surprising that when they returned in 2005 to tour their fifth album In Your Honour, they were playing Aussie stadiums for the first time.
In Your Honour went triple platinum in Australia and the band sold out back-to-back shows at both the Sydney Superdome and Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena.
Foo Fighters were fast becoming Australia's favourite American rock band.
Among their fans was Brant Webb, who was trapped underground for two weeks alongside fellow miner Todd Russell during the Beaconsfield mine collapse in 2006.
During his time underground, Webb requested an iPod featuring Foo Fighters songs — a request that reportedly moved Grohl to tears and led the rock star to send Webb and Russell a fax.
It read: "Though I'm halfway around the world right now, my heart is with you both, and I want you to know that when you come home, there's two tickets to any Foos show, anywhere, and two cold beers waiting for you. Deal?"
Webb took Grohl up on his offer when Foo Fighters returned for their eighth visit in October 2006 for a three-show residency at the Sydney Opera House to coincide with the release of their live acoustic album Skin & Bones.
At the final show of the residency, which Webb and his wife Rachel attended, Grohl played an instrumental he'd written in Webb's honour called Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners.
After the show, Webb and Grohl went for a beer as promised "and got f****** wasted in the hotel bar", at which point Grohl made a new promise — that Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners would appear on the next Foo Fighters record.
True to his word, the track appeared on 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.
'It's times like these, you learn to live again...'
Since then, Foo Fighters have been back four times and released a further four studio albums.
Among those visits was a three-hour-and-10-minute, 37-song epic concert on Goat Island in Sydney Harbour that was their longest gig ever at that point in their career (it's now their third-longest).
When Foo Fighters hit the stage at Kardinia Park in Geelong on Friday, March 4 it will have been 1,494 days since their last Australian show.
It's not their longest stretch between visits, but it's close.
Given their love of Australia, it's more than likely we won't have to wait that long again before we see them again for a proper tour.
