“He was competitive”: Kurt Cobain knew Dave Grohl would one day become a frontman
Back during Nirvana’s reign, when there were absolutely no doubts about who the face of the band was, nobody could have predicted that the goofy, sidelined drummer would one day be the leader of not just his very own rock band, but one of the world’s coolest bands in the world.
When Dave Grohl first joined the band, he wasn’t their first drummer. Before his arrival, they’d been through a handful of others who just didn’t seem to fit the bill. The biggest difficulty they no doubt faced was finding someone who easily bought into their dynamic, with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic already sharing a bone-deep understanding that barely needed any form of communication to explain what either of them was thinking.
As Grohl once described it, they were “soulmates” who were “the kind of friends that didn’t have to talk to each other” – they just knew what the other wanted and how they wanted to do it. This also meant that anyone attempting to come and rupture their precious bubble had their work cut out for them, and even Grohl himself found it difficult to find his place from time to time.
After all, Grohl once recalled the times when he wasn’t sure if he was actually welcomed in the band, which mostly came from overhearing Cobain talking about him in hushed tones when he wasn’t aware that Grohl could hear. The only time that Grohl felt like the troubled singer actually appreciated his contributions was a one-off encounter when they’d all gotten drunk at some disco in England, and Cobain blurted out that Grohl’s drumming on In Utero was “awesome”.
A typical sign of Cobain’s impossible-to-please demeanour and likely reluctance to give anyone praise who he viewed as his musical equal, it didn’t just prove how complicated Cobain was; it also showed how much he did actually value Grohl, even when he made it seem like the opposite. In fact, in between all those hushed conversations in which he tried to convince people he thought Grohl “sucked”, Cobain actually knew Grohl would go on to become a star, once telling his manager, Danny Goldberg, just that.
Speaking to the Washington Post, Goldberg recalled a conversation where Cobain said to him, “I don’t think you realise how good a singer Dave is,” explaining that he could overhear him singing harmonies every night. He also confirmed the suspicions that Cobain refrained from praising Grohl because he knew exactly how good he was, adding, “It was like he was really doing it so I would know this because there was this very fraternal side of him and a sweet side of him, but also it had a touch of envy in it. I mean, he was competitive.”
Although Cobain needn’t worry, especially as, had he lived on past the scrutiny of his own circumstances, he’d no doubt have remained a legend independent from Grohl’s talents, he’d been exactly right about his band member’s potential. After all, Grohl at the time didn’t yet have the experience (or self-belief) to be able to see his own fate in front of him, but he always had the drive and the energy to one day make it elsewhere.
He also unknowingly had everything it took to make it past that awkward stage when subtle seeds of ambition become a more fully-fledged passion project, before the whole thing eventually became its own beast and the Foo Fighters took flight like a perfect storm. Cobain might not have been able to predict that, but he did have a gut feeling that Grohl’s spark would lead him somewhere beyond the relatively short-lived walls of Nirvana and the grunge scene at the time.
Although Grohl himself would likely pin the whole thing down to luck, his work ethic was the one thing that gave him resilience, even within a crowd that made it seem like he wasn’t always the best person for the job. Even when he caught others talking about him in secret corners, spewing poorly concealed lies like he wasn’t the exact type of musician the rock scene needed at the time.
