The surprising moment a young Dave Grohl almost joined GWAR
It’s not an outlandish claim to state that Nirvana wouldn’t have hit such era-defining heights without Dave Grohl on the drums. It’s a testament to his importance to the group that imagining ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ without his thunderous performance is nigh-on impossible. Grohl brought a distinctive edge to Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic’s group, providing an immovable ballast for the pair moving into a future set to be dominated by grunge.
However, things could have been very different. In late 2021, Grohl broke the story that he almost joined costumed shock metallers GWAR in the 1980s as the end of his influential DC hardcore band, Scream, was nigh. It almost happened, but GWAR’s outlandish stage show proved too much for Grohl.
“GWAR were looking for a drummer,” Grohl recalled to Rolling Stone in September 2021. “And I talked to their guitar player Dewey about it. And he’s like, it’s great, and you get to design your own costume. As a drummer, you don’t want something that covers your face fully. You want your arms to be free. So I was like cool.”
The Foo Fighters frontman continued: “So I started kind of drawing this thing. At the time, GWAR was a band that would draw like 700 people, right? Which is huge. And then the more I thought about it, am I really gonna invite my uncle to see me play when there’s like fake blood and cum shooting all over the place?”
Shortly after Grohl’s claim, GWAR lead vocalist and occasional bassist, Blöthar issued a comical statement to Heavy Consequence. “Grohl remembers this ALL wrong,” he said. “He used to hang around the track with all the other young punks jacked on gak. This is back before he lost all his teeth. We hired him and then called him back immediately and fired him. He was in the band for around seven and a half minutes. He was holding us back”.
However, Blöthar’s human alter-ego, Michael Bishop, looked back on Grohl nearly joining GWAR with a little more honesty: “Our guitar player Dewey (Flattus Maximus) was booking shows in Richmond at the time, and we had all seen Dave play with his bands Dain Bramage and later on in Scream. He was already one of the greatest, hardest-hitting drummers I had ever seen. He still is. Dewey called and started the conversation with him about joining GWAR. I was stoked because I played bass at the time, and I would have loved to jam with him. Just think, he could have been working his ass off playing drums in a rubber monster suit all these years. Boy did he make the wrong choice.”
Then, when speaking to Metal Hammer in 2022, Blöthar went into greater detail about why he thinks Grohl didn’t join his band, which was not to do with their stage show. “GWAR was doing some pretty obscene stuff onstage,” he said. “He says it was because he didn’t want his family to come see him do that stuff – his uncle and aunt and his nieces and nephews.”
Continuing, Blöthar added: “But I don’t think it was that. I think he had enough sense to see that GWAR was a big pain in the ass, a hard band to be in. Why would you want to put these outfits on when you could just walk onstage in your normal clothes? Even back then, being in GWAR was hardly an appealing proposition for a musician.”
“You could say that GWAR and Nirvana are pretty different, but we’re both rock bands that got into Kiss and The Melvins, playing to kids who love heavy rock music,” Blöthar concluded. “But man, what a great drummer he was, and still is. I’m sure, he would have made GWAR sound fantastic, but I don’t think he’d be happy. Shame. He could have been enjoying this all these years, dressing in a big rubber suit!”
Dave Grohl in a big rubber GWAR suit? Now that would be quite something.
