Dave Grohl and Greg Kurstin joined forces with Beck for a rendition of “E-Pro” as part of the duo’s ongoing Hanukkah Sessions project.
The performance took place on Dec. 5 at the Largo in Los Angeles, with the official video released today (see below).
Beck handled guitar and lead vocal duties, with the ever-powerful Grohl on drums, Kurstin on keyboards and the latter’s the bird and the bee bandmate Inara George helping out with the song’s infectious “na na, na na na na na” chorus.
Beck scored a hit with “E-Pro” in 2005, as the single reached No. 1 on the alternative chart. He’s half Jewish from his mother’s side and has firmly rejected suggestions that he is a scientologist.
“I’m not a Scientologist. I don’t have any connection or affiliation with it,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2019. “My father was doing Scientology in the ’60s, so it’s something that has been around for most of my life. But the only time I hear anything negative about it is in interviews. In the real world, people I know, they don’t give a [expletive]. I was raised celebrating Jewish holidays, and I consider myself Jewish.”
Watch Beck Join the Hanukkah Sessions to Perform ‘E-Pro’
The Hanukkah Sessions, which began in 2020, find Grohl and producer Kurstin covering famous Jewish acts. In previous years, they have delivered these songs in studio locations, with occasional guests. This year’s installment marks the first time the sessions have been recorded and released from a live show. It’s not their first live Hanukkah-related performance, however, as Grohl and Kurstin played a Hanukkah Sessions set in 2021 at the BottleRock festival in Napa.
The Largo gig was a charity event, benefiting the Anti-Defamation League. Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, pop singer Pink, Tenacious D and director Judd Apatow were among the performers during the event.
Grohl and Beck have a friendship spanning back to the ‘90s, when they were major forces in the era’s alt-rock revolution. The two have shared a mutual respect ever since. When Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear reunited to play Nirvana songs at a January 2020 charity event, Beck was one of the guests who joined them.
A conversation with Beck inspired actually inspired Grohl to move to the San Fernando Valley. “There’s that funny stigma that is the San Fernando Valley, that it’s not a cool place to live,” Grohl told the Daily News in 2013. “I never understood that. So when Beck said ‘I think I’m gonna move out of Silver Lake.’ I said, ‘Dude! Valley! You’ve gotta go Valley.’
“The engineer in the studio said: ‘The Valley? You don’t want to live in the Valley,'” Grohl added, “and I said, ‘Well, why?’ And he said, ‘Because it’s the [expletive] Valley!’ That’s when I realized, that’s exactly where I want to live. Let everybody have the other side of the hill. I have the [expletive] Valley!”
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