Dave Grohl used the Key to the City of his birth town as bottle opener.

The Foo Fighters star was given the key to Warren, Ohio, in 2009 – where he also celebrated the opening of a road named in his honour – but said one of his favourite uses for it was to open a beer.

Asked about Dave Grohl Alley, he said: “It’s a pretty nice alley! Yeah, it’s pretty nice. It’s in the town where I was born. They gave me a key to the city and everything. I opened a beer with the key to the city.”

Foo Fighters – which also includes Chris Shiflett, Nate Mendel, Taylor Hawkins and Pat Smear – release their seventh album ‘Wasting Light’ next month, and Dave said it came together quickly because he doesn’t take too long to write songs any more.

He added to Fearne Cotton on the UK’s Radio1 station: “Sometimes songs that you like the most for the longest time are the ones that just happen and are really easy. Like ‘Times Like These’, that song was written in a couple of minutes and it’s fine. These days I come up with things really quickly.

“Every once in a while you stumble on a song and you think, ‘Wow, I think people are going to want to sing this when we play it live.’ To me that’s how you judge if a song is going to stay.”