The Beatles song that always reminds Dave Grohl of Kurt Cobain: “Stuck in my head so much, I couldn’t sleep”
There is a double-edged sword to the nostalgia that music can conjure in our souls. The ability to rekindle a memory from a dying ember to a roaring blaze with the help of just a few notes remains one of the art’s greatest tricks. However, not every fire is meant to warm the smores of your mind gently. Some have a more dangerous capacity and can leave you burned. For Dave Grohl, The Beatles managed to do both.
There can be no doubt that Grohl is one of the band’s biggest, if not most high-profile, fans. The former Nirvana drummer has routinely shared his admiration for the group. Not only for the songwriting prowess of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison but the drummer he labels the “king of feel”, Ringo Starr.
The 60-minute radio show, Dave Grohl: My Beatles, was designed to detail the Foo Fighters frontman’s connection to a series of different Beatles tracks. “I’d like to play the first Beatles song I ever heard, and it might be the first record I ever listened to,” he said.
“I remember having a sleepover at a friend’s house when I was four or five years old and listening to ‘Hey Jude’. I don’t think I’d ever listened to a rock and roll record. This was my introduction and it’s stuck with me ever since.”
He continued: “I remember that night, laying in my sleeping bag and singing along to the na-na-nas at the end of the song. It was stuck in my head so much I couldn’t sleep.”
The songs of the four Liverpudlians have reached millions of music lovers and become ingrained in their lives as unique moments. Whether they are somebody’s first dance with their partner, the record playing the first time their child sang along to the music, or, more simply, the band who made everything feel alright again, the Fab Four’s repertoire has become part of the very fabric of society. Sadly, for Grohl, they represent some happy times but also one particularly painful experience.
During an appearance on BBC Radio 2 to mark the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ iconic album Abbey Road, Grohl revealed that the 1965 song ‘In My Life’ holds a special place in his heart after it was played at Cobain’s funeral service.
The song was a seismic moment for its writer, Lennon, who noted of the track’s composition: “It was, I think, my first real major piece of work. Up till then, it had all been sort of glib and throwaway. And that was the first time I consciously put my literary part of myself into the lyric.”
“It means a lot to me because it was the song that was played at Kurt Cobain’s memorial,” Grohl explained to Radio 2. “That day, after everyone had said their piece, this next song came over the speakers, and everyone got to celebrate Kurt’s love of The Beatles one last time together.”
Using music to commemorate anyone’s life usually enshrines the song as connected to their memory forever. For those in attendance that day, it is difficult to assimilate the track with any other person. “Still to this day, when I hear it, it touches a place in me that no other song ever will. It’s called ‘In My Life’ and knowing how much of a fan Kurt was of The Beatles, and how much of an influence they were, to everything we’ve done ever done…I’d like to play this one for him.”
Therein lies the beautiful power of music. Within a few notes, it is easy to remember both the joy of life and the pain of its loss. For Grohl, one Beatles song will always hold the very essence of music itself.
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