“Get me out of here”: the Nirvana era Dave Grohl doesn’t like to revisit
Every artist has a certain patch of their career that is best kept in the vaults. It might still be fun to look back at the occasional tune as a piece of mindless fun as you go through whatever new music you have in the pipeline, but it’s better to focus on where the muse is telling you to go than dwelling on the past. Dave Grohl might have a few tunes that have special memories attached to them, but it might get a bit more complicated when talking about different patches of his career.
Talking about Grohl as a creative person also means having to deal with two parts of his personality. There’s the frontman who has steered Foo Fighters through the greatest rock and roll music of the past two decades, and then there is the humble drummer for Nirvana who brought the thunder to every one of their records. While he can talk about the moments when everything worked out, there are also a lot of hard times attached to his memories of Kurt Cobain.
Half of the time working in Nirvana may have seemed like a bunch of musicians having fun, but Cobain was practically a ticking time bomb by the time they started going through the In Utero tour. While it’s never clear whether he was that far gone to any of his bandmates, seeing him overdose in Paris and never lose his life was enough to start triggering alarm bells in Grohl when they took a break between two legs of the tour.
Even if they weren’t on the road, creative people never stop, and the band figured they make the best of their time off by getting back into the studio. And while the results didn’t see the light of day until much later, ‘You Know You’re Right’ is both one of the best songs Nirvana ever made and one of the most harrowing listens of their career.
“It’s actually on the radio here in America.”
dave grohl
It was clear that Cobain was not taking care of himself by this point, and after refusing to show up for the first sessions, breaking into this song was one of the most tuneful outlets of anger he could think of. ‘Scentless Apprentice’ was a lot harsher to listen to, but hearing the chorus primarily be the word ‘PAIN’ screamed half the time did a much better job than if Cobain simply told the audience what was bothering him.
When Grohl first started hearing the tune on the radio, though, the last thing he wanted to do was be reminded of those final days in the band, saying, “It’s actually on the radio here in America. I hear it every day on my way to the fuckin’ studio: ‘Next up, the new Nirvana song!’ I’m like, ‘What the fuck?!! Time machine – get me out of here!’” Then again, that might have more to do with the legal matter of getting the song out.
Since there was a heated dispute between the rest of the band and Courtney Love as to how the song was going to come out, Grohl also probably remembers the hours spent arguing about how the track would get released. When it eventually did reach the top of the charts, though, it’d be hard to think of a single soul that didn’t feel a touch haunted hearing Cobain’s voice once again.
The biggest names in grunge had come and gone and had been replaced with post-grunge schlock, but whereas ‘You Know You’re Right’ easily wipes the floor with anything Creed or Nickelback were doing, it was not always for the right reasons. Because this wasn’t any other posthumous song, this was a ghost from the past looking to pay us a visit once last time.
