What did Kurt Cobain think of Dave Grohl’s music?
As all legends do, Kurt Cobain raised the bar for everybody. Not since the days when The Beatles were at the top of the game had the world’s musical direction been changed so decidedly. Of course, since the Liverpool band’s emergence, the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin had come to the fore and pushed rock on. Still, between the moment the Fab Four first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and the release of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in September 1991, no one had so single-handedly dictated the zeitgeist.
While it took Cobain and Nirvana an extensive period of cutting their teeth and numerous lineup changes before the sound of their 1989 debut Bleach coalesced, in their early years, the frontman’s talent was clear. Fully committed to his craft, over the years, he wrote prolifically, and this, in tandem with regular gigging, saw him evolve as an artist and finally start to make good on his idea of blending potent pop melodies with the wrath of punk.
Although Cobain might have all but turned his back on it following its era-defining, overnight success, working with Butch Vig on 1991’s Nevermind – the definitive grunge album – facilitated his songwriting and brought it to life with crisp production. As soon as the record arrived, boasting ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘In Bloom’, ‘Come As You Are’ and other classics, Cobain was hailed as one of the greatest songwriters of all time and, more importantly, the voice of his generation.
Naturally, this created immense pressure, and living under the hot glare of the spotlight would be partially accountable for Cobain’s tragic death in 1994. However, striking a more positive note, it was obvious to all who subscribed to his music just how rare his talent was, and how significant Nirvana’s emergence was. Effectively writing the handbook for what is now dubbed alternative rock, with his alleged pilfering of Pixies leader Frank Black’s quiet-loud-quiet dynamics, bleak lyrics, crunching guitar and noisy solos, after incubating underground for much of the 1980s, Cobain was the final component alternative culture needed to take hold of the world.
One man who was acutely aware of Cobain’s brilliance as a songwriter was Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. A gifted composer in his own right, it wouldn’t be until years after the trio’s tragic 1994 end that he would return from a bleak period of fully rejecting music and eventually form Foo Fighters, the project he has headed up until today, with sustained global success. Yet, despite Grohl not exploring his own project until after Nirvana, he wrote numerous demos when playing in them, with his talent heavily inferred by producing the thunderous riff on ‘Scentless Apprentice’ from 1993’s In Utero.
While Cobain was dismissive of the “cliché grunge Tad riff” of ‘Scentless Apprentice’ and told biographer Michael Azerrad that he initially elected to write a song including it just to appease Grohl, he did say “it turned out really cool.” Furthermore, according to the Foo Fighters leader, Cobain liked some of the other demos he had shown him to the point he was “really excited about it”.
When speaking to Bill Simmons in 2020, Grohl recalled that affirming experience, which offered more insight into Cobain’s character. He said: “There was one time where I recorded something that I was really proud of. And I’m like, ‘Man, I’ve recorded this song’ – I had a studio in my basement – I played it for Kurt. And he was really excited about it.”
The Foo Fighters frontman continued: “He liked the riff and the melody, but he didn’t really like the lyric, but he didn’t want to ask if he could change the lyric, coz he didn’t want to, you know, like, offend me or something. Which, of course, I would have said like, ‘Fuck dude, take it, do your thing, that’d be great’, but we never did.”
Although they never collaborated on the material, Grohl continued to work at his craft and hammer out his distinctive style, which has been a fixture of life for nearly 30 years. I wonder what Cobain would have made of tracks such as ‘Everlong’ and ‘Monkey Wrench’; in many ways, they are spiritual successors to his work.
