When Dave Grohl almost walked out on Nirvana
Dave Grohl isn’t the kind of person many would consider nasty or intimidating. If anything, there’s a good chance that you ran into him in a pub, Grohl would end up buying you a drink and talking music all night long. While that’s the version of Grohl that he moulded himself into over the years, his days as the mild-mannered drummer in Nirvana led to him almost walking out on the grunge icons.
If time had been different, Grohl would probably have never had the chance to perform with Kurt Cobain in the first place. While Cobain was putting together the makings of Nirvana out of the Seattle underground, Grohl was becoming well-versed in every flavour of punk rock he could get his hands on, eventually settling in the group Scream.
Though Grohl may have been looking forward to a life of corn dog dinners and cheap weed for the rest of his life, he got the opportunity to jam with the band when longtime drummer Chad Channing wasn’t playing the kind of beats that they were happy with. Compared to Scream’s position on the musical totem pole, being asked to join Nirvana was probably the equivalent of joining The Beatles of the underground for Grohl.
Not compromising his sound in the slightest, many of Grohl’s contributions to the band came from how hard he hit the drums. While Cobain may have been living out his John Lennon fantasies behind the fretboard, Grohl was the group’s resident ‘John Bonham’, leathering the hell out of his drums and leaving more than a few drum techs in a cold sweat whenever he played onstage.
As the band started to get more popular off the success of Nevermind, there was a conversation about Cobain sacking Grohl halfway through one of their tours. Not wanting to have the massive sound of the drums anymore, Cobain wanted to pair things down, which led to Grohl almost quitting the band in protest.
Starting with a few rumblings about sacking Grohl that he heard in between two shows, the drummer remembered being mortified about his position in the band. By the time the group had touched down, Grohl was preparing to lay it all on the line, threatening to walk out on the group if they didn’t like what he was doing.
Grohl would eventually confront the band about it, saying, “I talked to Krist [Novoselic] and said, ‘Is this really what you guys want to do, because if that’s what you want, maybe just let me know and we can call it a day’. I eventually talked to Kurt, and he said, ‘No, that’s not what we want to do’. I just felt it’s up to you guys what drummer you really want, and they decided I should stay”.
Granted, there was always more going on behind the scenes than Grohl realised. After becoming hooked on heroin, Cobain began to withdraw after working on the album In Utero, not enjoying anything about the band’s new stadium tour and eventually passing away after going to rehab in between two legs of their touring cycle.
While Grohl ultimately found himself without a band, Foo Fighters would be his way of healing his musical broken heart, putting the drums at the front of the mix just like they were in the glory days of Nevermind. Grohl may have been the beating heart behind Nirvana’s best moments, but sometimes his amped-up performances were a bit too much for Cobain to take.
