For These Stars, Mom Rules

"I tried to instill in him what works for me," she said. "First thing, be spiritual. Have the Lord in your life to guide you; good morals and values are the basis for everything. Without them, I don't know how you can have a happy and successful life."

Every once in a while, she said, someone who has a copy of the cookbook asks Thomas for an autograph.

"Are you sure?" she recalled asking in reply, surprised that a player's mother could be considered a celebrity, too.

Passing on the Love of Music

On a sunny afternoon in the Springfield home where she raised her musician son, Virginia Grohl recalls the day when the Foo Fighters frontman stopped a show in England to call her onstage. Watching from the wings, she maneuvered toward him in clunky rain boots, touched by the gesture but so stunned she hardly recalls what was said.

David Grohl told the crowd he owed his success to his mom. "I just wanted people to pay tribute to the person responsible for my being there," he said yesterday.

He added: "She's my idol. She's my greatest hero. She's strong, smart, independent, talented, funny. She's the . . . coolest person I ever met in my life."

Virginia Grohl, 70, said she and her son have been close since he was a boy playing soccer in the fields of North Springfield Elementary School, tearing up the back yard with his mini-bike, slamming hockey pucks at the Fairfax Ice Arena, joining lacrosse teams, latching onto a guitar at about age 10.

For much of his childhood, she said, she worked as a high school English teacher and raised him and his older sister, Lisa, in a tiny "box of a house." The close quarters and being "kind of poor" brought them all together, she said. Virginia and their father had divorced.

David Grohl said that although his mother had rules, they were always good friends. Even as a teenager and "a punk rock kid," he said, he and his mother would listen to jazz at One Step Down in the District or see a movie together. "I got the cool mom," he said.

Virginia Grohl said she understood her son's love for music because she appreciated it, too. As a teenager, she had been part of a girl trio -- "sort of like the McGuire Sisters" -- but "it never occurred to us to continue with it," she said.

Her son seized the chance.

Most surprising to other people, Virginia Grohl said, was that she let him drop out of Annandale High School at 17 to tour in Europe with the Washington band Scream. She recalled: "I said, 'Hallelujah. Go.' Because, of all the things he's done brilliantly in his life, school was never one of them."

He would learn more on tour in Europe, she decided, "than he's going to get making excuses for why he didn't read Chapter 7."

David Grohl said, in retrospect, "even then, she knew me well enough to know I was better off following my heart."

Grohl played drums for Scream for several years and, when it disbanded, went on to Nirvana, the Seattle grunge band led by Kurt Cobain.

It was 1995 when Grohl formed the Foo Fighters, not long after Cobain committed suicide. In the past 13 years, the Foo Fighters have released a half-dozen albums and garnered as many Grammys.

Virginia Grohl enjoys the music so much she shuns earplugs at concerts. "They change the sound," she said.

"You know, people sometimes look at me like, 'You're 70 and you like his music?' And I do," she said.

While in Los Angeles, Grohl stays about 15 minutes from her son and five blocks from her daughter, an accomplished visual artist.

Retired from teaching, she travels often to her son's concerts in the United States and abroad. She is close to other members of the band and crew. Last summer, she rode the tour bus for two weeks in Europe.

"I am really lucky," she said. "People say, 'I want your life,' and I don't blame them. I love it."

When the cameras flash near her son, however, she often heads the other way. "Part of it was that it just didn't seem very rock-and-roll to have your mom around backstage," she said. "I haven't met too many mothers who are backstage or on tour. Really, it's pretty rare."

Since the birth of her granddaughter two years ago, her sense of parenthood has expanded, she said, reaching across to the next generation.

"I'm proud of so many things about him, only a few of which are music-related," she said. "Now what I thrill to is the kind of father he is. It's just the most amazing thing. And his wife, too. . . . We all start with nothing, with no book or advice, just fear. . . . And they have just done it so well."