How Dave Grohl ended up joining Nirvana
You don’t imagine bands having to interview someone. You picture The Ramones arising from a New York gutter just simply springing up from the gutter like a collection of close-knit weeds. However, like it or lump it, admin is everywhere in the modern world and even Dave Grohl had to ‘network’ his way into Nirvana. Grunge went global thereafter.
Drummers don’t grow in Petri dishes; you can’t pluck a guitarist of your choosing off a tree. To find the right fit, you have to search high and low, then put them to the test. Thus, it might come as a surprise, but a slew of musical stars were originally put to the test in an audition. Simon Cowell and co might not have been casting their judgements, but most bands weren’t fully formed brethren from the get-go.
Dave Grohl merely answered an ad when he joined his first band, Scream, as a guitarist before being ushered towards the kit. And Kurt Cobain was merely forced along to watch him by a friend. Cobain had gone off Scream’s new sound, he didn’t want to go to the gig, but he was unaware that they had recently recruited a new drummer. At the show, he forgot all about his disdain, turned to his pal and proclaimed, ‘That’s the kind of drummer we need’. Six weeks later, they invited Grohl over to Seattle.
Grohl hadn’t been looking for much at the time. He remembered his Scream days fondly. “I was 18 years old, doing exactly what I wanted to do,” says Grohl. “With $7 a day, I travelled to places I’d never dreamed of visiting. And all because of music. The feeling of driving across the country in a van with five other guys, stopping in every city to play, sleeping on people’s floors, watching the sun come up over the desert as I drove, it was all too much. This was definitely where I belonged.”
Nevertheless, he landed in Seattle and a few days later, he was invited over to a rehearsal room called the Dutchman, and midway through the first song, ‘Silver’, Cobain and Novoselic gave each other the nod to say: “We’ve got our guy”. However, at this stage, Grohl still thought he was just standing while Dan Peters was away on a European festival tour with Mudhoney.
However, During an impromptu acoustic set on Calvin Johnson’s KAOS radio show the next day, Cobain announced that Nirvana had found “the drummer of [their] dreams.” This is how Grohl knew he was in the band. “His name is Dave and he’s a baby Dale Crover,” Cobain proclaimed. “He plays almost as good as Dale. And within a few years’ practice he may even give him a run for his money.” The rest is history.
