The song that made Dave Grohl want to join Nirvana: “This kid can do that too?”
As the 1990s started, Dave Grohl’s world was about to turn upside down. Though he had been cutting his teeth with the hardcore punk act Scream, his destiny changed when a band out of Seattle named Nirvana needed a drummer. While Grohl gravitated towards any type of heavy music, there was one song that sold him on the prospect of joining the group.
Before Grohl had even picked up two sticks, he was still an avid fan of any kind of music. Growing up in Virginia, Grohl often found himself practising drums by listening to records by Rush and Led Zeppelin, which involved playing on pillows to get the right timing for the songs. If there was one band that Grohl would call fundamental for him in those days, it was The Beatles.
When discussing his upbringing, Grohl said that he learned everything there is to know about songwriting by listening to the Fab Four, having nothing but a Beatles songbook and an acoustic guitar when he got started. There was a fire in Grohl’s heart, though, and he finally found his calling when listening to punk rock music.
In the wake of bands like Minor Threat and Fugazi becoming the biggest bands in the local DC hardcore scene, Grohl got to jam with the band Scream, including future Foo Fighters guitarist Franz Stahl. Although Grohl could play as fast as he could for hours on end, he was knocked out the first time he heard Nirvana.
Half a world away, Kurt Cobain had already begun assembling his first masterpieces with his Seattle outfit, releasing their debut album Bleach with drummer Chad Channing. Although the album featured many furious punk ragers, the song that made Grohl turn his head was quickly the slowest on the record.
When discussing his love for Nirvana’s music, the drummer recalled the power behind the track ‘About a Girl’, telling Howard Stern, “I knew [Bleach] because it was really popular in the underground. And the cool thing about it was that it was noisy, dissonant punk rock cool songs. But then there was this song called ‘About A Girl’ in the middle of the record. It sounds like something off of an early Beatles record. It’s like a Lennon/McCartney song. And you’re like, ‘this kid can do that too?’”.
By the time Grohl got the call to be in the band, there was no hesitation, getting a recommendation from Melvins’ frontman Buzz Osborne. After agreeing to join, the band knew that they had found their secret weapon, with producer Butch Vig remembering a call from Cobain saying, “‘Butch, we’ve just hired the greatest drummer in the world. I’m not kidding you, he’s the greatest drummer in the world. He’s awesome dude’, and then he hung up”.
Although most of the power behind Nirvana came from Cobain’s knack for songwriting, the biggest X-factor on their landmark album Nevermind comes from what Grohl brought. While never overplaying, every one of Grohl’s drum fills has a particular strength behind them that was missing from the group’s debut, from his massive stamina in songs like ‘Breed’ to playing an understated beat on the moody closer, ‘Something in the Way’.
Despite the group’s landmark song ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ being their crowning achievement, the song never really gets going until Grohl’s massive figure comes stomping out of the speakers. Even though Grohl had the potential to write songs of his own, there was no debating who was the superior songwriter when he heard ‘About a Girl’.
