Watch Dave Grohl play ‘Marigold’ for the first time in over a decade
Dave Grohl has done a solid job of keeping his two most famous bands, Nirvana and Foo Fighters, separate entities. When the Foos went out on their first tours as a group, Grohl was bombarded with questions and inquiries about Nirvana and whether his songs were related to former bandmate Kurt Cobain. Grohl bristled at the comparisons and subsequently baulked at playing any Nirvana songs, whether they be hits or deep cuts.
“Every question in every interview was about Nirvana,” bassist Nate Mendel explained in the documentary Foo Fighters: Back and Forth. “You can imagine what they were. ‘Is this song about Kurt?’ Take any song from the record. ‘Is that song about Kurt Cobain?’”
Initial audiences didn’t know what to make of Foo Fighters: the band’s debut hadn’t come out yet, and the group was split down the middle with two legendary Washington bands: half Nirvana (Grohl and Pat Smear) and half Sunny Day Real Estate (Mendel and William Goldsmith). Without any knowledge of songs, most diehard fans went to the only song they knew from Grohl.
“They didn’t know any of the songs because the record hadn’t come out yet,” Smear said. “There was a song called ‘Marigold’ by Nirvana that Dave had written and sang on, and it was the only thing that they knew to yell out when we were playing. So you’d just hear ‘Marigold!’”
‘Marigold’ first appeared on the album Pocketwatch, which Grohl released under the pseudonym Late! in 1992. It would later be re-recorded by Nirvana, sans Kurt Cobain, and appeared as one of the B-sides to the ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ single. It was the only official Nirvana song that Grohl ever sang lead on, and it was the only song that most Nirvana fans had ever heard from Grohl by the time he was touring with Foo Fighters.
Smear explained that the weirdness of playing a Nirvana song ultimately meant that ‘Marigold’ never got played by the first incarnation of the Foo Fighters. However, a decade after those initial tours, Grohl resurrected the song for the group’s 2006 theatre tour that eventually became the live album Skin and Bones. In doing so, ‘Marigold’ became the only song recorded by both Nirvana and Foo Fighters.
The last time that Grohl played ‘Marigold’ was at Paladino’s in Los Angeles for a secret club gig. Krist Novoselic joined Grohl and Smear onstage to perform the track at the start of the encore, and after that performance, the song disappeared from Foo Fighters’ setlists.
That was until last night when Grohl resurrected the song for his virtual performance at the ‘Letters For Santa’ benefit concert. One of the show’s organisers is Steve Albini, the legendary engineer who worked with Nirvana on In Utero and produced the Nirvana recording of ‘Marigold’. Albini helped recruit Grohl for the performance, and in turn, Grohl dusted off ‘Marigold’ for the first time in over a decade.
Check out Grohl’s performance, which leads off with ‘Marigold’, down below.
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