Foo Fighters’ first TV performance changed everything for Dave Grohl: “An honour”
When Nirvana ended in the tragic suicide of Kurt Cobain, there must have been mourning not only over the loss of their friend but also of their careers. Dave Grohl, however, wasn’t content with slipping back into anonymity. He had something to say.
He chose to say it with his new band, the Foo Fighters, who allowed Grohl to get out from behind the kit, pick up his guitar and make some noise of his own. Below, we’re taking a look back at the Foo Fighters’ national TV debut on Letterman.
Things could’ve been very different for Grohl after the loss of Kurt Cobain. Like bassist Krist Novoselic, he could’ve seen the opportunity to retreat back into a semblance of normal life and find happiness off stage. But Grohl was never one for sitting back, especially not at 26. But before he formed his new band, he had an offer to join another American stalwart, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
At the time Grohl was seriously considering being their drummer, “I was this close to joining,” he told Rolling Stone in 1995. “When they rehearsed, they treated me like I was in the band. It was such an honour. But I figured that I was 26 years old and didn’t want to become a drummer for hire.”
Grohl took himself off to his bedroom and started making his own music instead. He created a bunch of early Foo Fighters demos, on which he played all the instruments, and began to assert himself as a bandleader. Without a band. Though most of the tracks were written while Grohl was in Nirvana, the buzz around his newly circulating tape of demos was gaining traction.
That tape didn’t feel like the work of someone testing the waters. It sounded like a reset, a deliberate move away from everything Nirvana had been, even if the shadow of that band still hung over every chord he played.
There’s a certain urgency running through those early recordings as well, like Grohl was trying to prove something before anyone had the chance to doubt him. Not in an aggressive way, but in the sense that he knew exactly what he wanted this next chapter to look like and wasn’t going to wait around for permission to start it.
He quickly recruited a touring band. As well as acquiring former Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear, Grohl also picked up the rhythm section from the recently disbanded Sunny Day Real Estate, Nate Mendel and William Goldsmith, and went about touring like crazy. Cooped up in a van and making their way across the country, they were sowing the seeds of stadium-sized success.
It was a tour that the band had planned on replicating on their recent 25-year anniversary tour. But sadly, due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, that will no longer be possible. So with a bunch of people missing out on seeing their favourite band in a host of small venues, we thought we’d take it back to 1995 and see the band making their TV debut on Letterman, singing their debut track ‘This Is a Call’.
