Why Kurt Cobain was often jealous of Dave Grohl’s singing
What path awaited drummer Dave Grohl had Nirvana not ended the way it did?
One of the unfortunate legacies of any artist’s early death is how entrenched their demise stands in the band’s cultural memory. When breezily allowing the pop image carousel to roll through the Nirvana story, it typically jumps between a three-act outline of early Seattle punk underground, Nevermind’s explosive Billboard 200 smash, and frontman Kurt Cobain taking his own life at 27 years old in 1994.
The fact was, there was magic still to be gleaned. 1993’s final In Utero LP flexed a songwriter still at his A-game, able to jump into more difficult, alternative rock territory without blunting his simple but gripping songcraft, and in the session vaults lay gems like ‘You Know You’re Right’, cut during the final studio time Nirvana ever committed.
Would Grohl have stayed put on the drum stool? For decades now, his Foo Fighters have stood as one of rock’s most colossal successful outfits, winning a dedicated fanbase and, to this day, still able to headline mammoth stadium shows.
He’d had some practice during his time with Nirvana. Early on, Grohl had cut the lo-fi Pocketwatch tape under the Late! moniker, featuring the ‘Color Pictures of a Marigold’ which would end up rerecorded during the In Utero sessions as ‘Marigold’, the only Nirvana song ever featuring someone else’s vocals and tucked away as the B-side to ‘Heart-Shaped Box’.
Still, Grohl’s emerging songwriting chops caught Cobain’s attention. According to the band’s manager, Danny Goldberg, the late Nirvana frontman had praised the drummer’s vocal gifts, if subtly revealing a pang of insecurity.
“Kurt just said to me, ‘I don’t think you realise how good a singer Dave is, but I hear him singing harmonies every night,’” Goldberg reflected to The Washington Post in 2019. “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.”
Cobain may have been just a little green, but never at the expense of eternal encouragement toward his sheepish friend. It was all there on record, Grohl bellowing those essential high-harmonies on ‘In Bloom’, ‘On a Plain’, and the eerie ‘Something in the Way’ from Nevermind, and live would support Cobain’s lead vocals with sturdy “oohs” and “aahs” supporting the chorus. Had Nirvana continued, Grohl may likely have accrued further presence behind the mic.
It wasn’t just his voice that Cobain eagerly brought to the fore. Legend has it that during the genesis of ‘Alone + Easy Target’, later to feature on 1995’s Foo Fighters, the Nirvana frontman eagerly listened to the demo according to an anecdote Grohl revealed to Mojo in 2009, “He was sitting in the bathtub with a Walkman on, listening to the song, and when the tape ended, he took the headphones off and kissed me and said, ‘Oh, finally, now I don’t have to be the only songwriter in the band!’”
