When Dave Grohl joined Tom Petty to perform on SNL
In 1994, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers featured as the musical guest on the US American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live. The band were in the midst of a change of drummers, eventually replacing original member Stan Lynch with Steve Ferrone, so Tom Petty called in a favour from Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl for the show.
In the Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers documentary Runnin’ Down A Dream, Grohl recalls how his appearance onstage came about. He said: “Someone from my management calls and says ‘Hey, Tom Petty just called and wants to know if you’ll play drums with them on Saturday Night Live?’”
Grohl recalls wondering, “What the fuck is he calling me for? He couldn’t find a good drummer?” His shock seems misplaced, given that Grohl is now widely believed to be one of the best drummers of all time. With a drumming style louder and faster than most, he was more than capable of picking up the sticks alongside Petty on SNL. He agreed to play drums for the set, naming it “the first time that I’d really looked forward to playing the drums since Nirvana ended”.
The performance saw Grohl join a slick, sunglasses-wearing Petty onstage for two tracks behind the drumset, ‘Honey Bee’ and ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’. Grohl particularly looked forward to playing the latter: “I was really excited to play both songs but mostly ‘Honey Bee’ because ‘Honey Bee’ is just such a rocker. It’s like the kind of thing a bunch of 16-year-olds would play in the garage to get off. It’s killer. It’s a barn burner.”
After Grohl played with him on SNL, Tom Petty actually offered him a long-term drummer position in his band. On the Howard Stern Show, Grohl recalls: “We played SNL and afterwards he basically was like, ‘Man, that was good. Be a shame if that’s the only time we do it’, sort of thing.”
Petty then called Grohl again at home to ask him to join the band, offering him his own bus and promising not to make him tour “too hard”. But Grohl had just started the Foo Fighters and was still feeling the aftermath of Kurt Cobain’s suicide: “I just felt weird about just going right back to the drums because it would have just reminded me of being in Nirvana.”
He continued: “It would have been sad for me personally. It would’ve been an emotional thing to be behind the drumset every night and not have Kurt there.”
His decision to decline the offer also came from a desire to do something different, to subvert the expectations of those who knew of him. As Grohl told Kerrang, “I was supposed to just join another band and be a drummer the rest of my life. I thought that I would rather do what no one expected me to do.”
His faith in the unexpected was not misplaced, as the Foo Fighters went on to become one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Rather than becoming a long-term endeavour, Grohl’s appearance on SNL alongside Petty provided a one-off collaboration between two rock greats, and perhaps it’s more special that way.
