Dave Grohl has spoken about his time in Nirvana, saying he was “so nervous” about being fired by bandmates Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic after he joined the legendary grunge band on drums in 1990.
The Foo Fighers frontman made the comments on Matt Wilkinson’s Apple Music show, detailing his insecurities about his early days in the group.
“When I joined Nirvana, I was their fifth drummer. They’d had a team of drummers before me and some of them were more in the band than others. So when I joined, I didn’t know Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain at all,” commented Grohl.
“When we first met and started playing, it was clear that it worked really well, and we sounded what most people know now to sound like Nirvana. But you just meet these people and then it wasn’t long… It was almost exactly a year from the time I joined to the time Nevermind came out. Once it came out, it was like things happen so quickly.”
Grohl went on to explain that every band he’d previously been in was with friends he’d known for a long time – and that while the music sounded great, the “deep personal connection” wasn’t there at the start of the band’s rise to fame.
“You’re just so nervous that you’re going to either get fired or it’s going to stop. I didn’t want to get fired basically. And so I was doing my best to keep this thing from going away. So there was this real insecurity that I had, ‘I’m not good enough. They’re going to find somebody else.’”
Elsewhere in the interview Grohl discussed the impact playing with Cobain and Novoselic had on him. “It’s safe to say that we wouldn’t be here right now talking … if it weren’t for my time in Nirvana.
“I learned so many lessons from Kurt, I learned so many lessons from Krist. It was such an honour to be in that band and it was so devastating when it ended.”
