The Foo Fighters song Dave Grohl called an “observation” of Nirvana
Dave Grohl has never been afraid to talk about his personal life through his music. When Foo Fighters released their 2023 album But Here We Are, the band was very open about the fact that most of the album was about their drummer, Taylor Hawkins, who had passed away, and Dave Grohl’s mother.
Lines such as “I woke up and walked a million miles today, I’ve been looking up and down for you, all this time it still feels just like yesterday, that I walked a million miles with you” are undeniable. It’s an incredibly raw approach to music, and fans appreciate getting insight into it. Music forms a connection between artist and listener, and that connection can resonate on intense levels.
Of course, Hawkins and Grohl’s mother wasn’t the first time he had been exposed to losing someone he was close to. He originally found fame playing as the drummer in Nirvana, a band championed for pioneering the grunge movement and fronted by Kurt Cobain, who has since gone down as a musical icon.
Cobain passed away well before his time, as he unfortunately took his own life on April 5th, 1994. Grohl started Foo Fighters after a short break from music after Nirvana split following Cobain’s passing. While he enjoys playing in the band he plays in today, he still has a lot of love for Nirvana and his musical partner, who passed.
Interestingly, Cobain has never been too open creatively when talking about Kurt Cobain. During interviews and on songs, he doesn’t speak much about the lead singer, which is the result of feeling uncomfortable doing so. The fact is that Nirvana was such a musical force to be reckoned with, and Cobain has left behind such a legacy that Grohl finds it tough to get the right words to talk about the band.
“It’s tough because I played […] for a Japanese journalist, and it contains the word ‘Nevermind’. Even just the word makes people flinch or get worked up,” said Grohl, “So, yes, I feel uncomfortable because it’s very personal and the one thing that everyone expects. That’s what I don’t like. I write a song, and it’s [Wheedling child’s voice], ‘Is this about fucking Courtney or Kurt? Courtney or Kurt?’ You know, there have been a few other people in my life that I have been in love with or that I fucking hate. They’re not all about Kurt and Courtney.”
As a result, Grohl tended not to discuss his time in Nirvana too much within the Foo Fighters; however, one Foo Fighters song spoke specifically about when he was getting to know his fellow Nirvana bandmates. ‘Friend Of A Friend’ was included in the band’s 2005 album In Your Honour, and it’s a deeply personal track about when he first met his bandmates but didn’t know them very well.
“I’d just moved in with Kurt. I didn’t know anybody. I had a drum set packed in one box and flew up there,” he concluded, “I would stay up till the sun came up and sleep all day. Olympia, Washington, is fucking depressing enough, and I was living with this person that I didn’t know. But he had a four-track, so I wrote songs: ‘Marigold’ and ‘Friend Of A Friend’. It was an observation of Kurt and Krist and I.”
