In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dave Grohl revealed that he almost came close to joining the GWAR fold as their drummer whilst cutting his teeth as a teen drum dynamo in Washington D.C.
GWAR, the masked deviant thrashers, may seem like they descended on earth from a far-off planet, but as it happens, they hail from the same Virginia/D.C. area as Dave Grohl. In the late 1980s, whilst Grohl was wielding the sticks for D.C. hardcore act Scream, GWAR were on the hunt for a drummer.
“I talked to their guitar player Dewey about it,” Grohl told Rolling Stone. “At the time GWAR was a band that would draw like 700 people, right? Which is huge.”
Grohl ultimately had a change of heart, admitting: “The more I thought about it, am I really gonna invite my uncle to see me play when there’s like fake blood and cum shooting all over the place?”
Now, GWAR have shared their side of the story. Lead vocalist Blöthar the Berserker, in a recent interview with Heavy Consequence he recalled “[Grohl] used to hang around the track with all the other young punks jacked on gak,” he said.
“This is back before he lost all his teeth. We hired him and then called him back immediately and fired him. He was in the band for around 7 and a half minutes. He was holding us back.”
Blöthar’s alter-ego, Michael Bishop, the former GWAR bass player, Beefcake the Mighty, had a kinder recollection of how it all went down.
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“We had all seen Dave play with his bands Dain Bramage and later on in Scream,” Bishop said.
“He was already one of the greatest, hardest-hitting drummers I had ever seen. He still is. Dewey called and started the conversation with him about joining GWAR. I was stoked because I played bass at the time, and I would have loved to jam with him.
