Dave Grohl is one of the most prominent drummers in modern rock but also one of the nicest and most widely liked guys in today’s music world. Always smiling (well, almost always), always something interesting or funny to say, invites kids on stage at Foo Fighters shows, even when he falls off stage and damages himself really badly, he is able to turn it around into a good show or a joke. We just do not tend to associate Dave with sadness.
Photo: Andrew Stuart
Yet, he also has had some dark times in his life, and some of them are closely connected with his former band Nirvana and its late leader, Kurt Cobain. In a recent interview for radiox, the man talked about it in the following fashion:
For years I couldn’t even listen to any music, let alone a Nirvana song. When Kurt died, every time the radio came on, it broke my heart. I don’t put Nirvana records on, no. Although they are always on somewhere. I get in the car, they’re on. I go into a shop, they’re on. For me, it’s so personal.
I remember everything about those records. I remember the shorts I was wearing when we recorded them or that it snowed that day. Still, I go back and find new meanings to Kurt’s lyrics. Not to seem revisionist, but there are times when it hits me. You go: ‘Wow, I didn’t realise he was feeling that way at the time’.
Nirvana, for me, was a personal revolution, I was 21. You remember being 21? You think you know it all. But you don’t. I thought I knew everything. And being in Nirvana showed me how little I really knew. They were some of the greatest highs of my life, but also, of course, one of the biggest lows.
