Dave Grohl was “afraid” of playing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ after Kurt Cobain’s death: “It just seemed sort of forbidden”
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has opened up about his complex feelings with Nirvana’s music in the aftermath of Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994.
Although the surviving members of Nirvana, Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear, have performed together as recently as in 2025 for the 50th-anniversary special of Saturday Night Live, it took until their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2014 for their first reunion.
Now, in a new interview on The Zane Lowe with Apple Music to coincide with the release of Foo Fighters’ new album Your Favorite Toy, Grohl explained how playing Nirvana songs was beyond him for a significant number of years.
“It’s such a weird thing to feel afraid to play songs,” he told Lowe. “And for a long time, it’s like I was even afraid just to sit down at a drum set and play the opening riff to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. And so it just seemed sort of forbidden, you know,” Grohl added.
Reflecting on the handful of times they’ve come together to re-live their Nirvana days, Grohl shared, “And so the few times that Krist and Pat and I have gotten together to do it, it’s a trip. I mean, it’s like a time warp. It’s like a time capsule.”
Grohl then highlighted what made Nirvana so special, adding, “And the noise that the three of us make together, you don’t really get that noise anywhere else. And so when you’re in the room and it happens, the way that Krist strums his bass lines, the bass that he uses, the equipment he uses, his sense of feel and time, it’s like all of those things combined with Pat like with that crazy Germs Pat Smear guitar thing.”
The Nirvana drummer continued, “And then some loud ass drums, it’s like when it happens, you’re just like, oh fuck, I remember this. Shit, I haven’t heard this in 35 years. Oh my god. And it’s a really beautiful sound and a beautiful feeling.”
In the same conversation, Grohl also remembered Cobain as one of the all-time greats, saying of his late friend’s otherworldly talent, “I do know that Kurt was one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and it was inevitable. Like what happened, those songs, it was inevitable that his songs would be recognised as some of the greatest songs of all time.”
Grohl, along with the rest of Foo Fighters, is currently in the UK to coincide with the release of their new album, Your Favorite Toy, and will serve as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live UK this weekend, becoming the first non-British act to have this honour.
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