Dave Grohl has spoken about his insecurities after joining Nirvana, saying he was “doing his best” to remain in what would become one of music’s biggest names that emerged from Seattle grunge scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
Speaking on Matt Wilkinson’s show on Apple Music, the Foo Fighters frontman revealed that he was “so nervous” that bandmates, the late Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic, would fire him after taking him on as Nirvana’s official drummer in 1990.
“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,” Grohl told Wilkinson.
“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.
Dave continued, “The band got really big. But every band I’d been in before was with friends that I’d known for a really long time, so there’s some security in that.”
“So when you join a band where you don’t know anyone and you’re just starting to get to know each other, and it sounds great when you play music, you’re just starting to get to know each other, but there’s not a deep personal connection – and then the band becomes really huge really quickly.
“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.’”
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It comes amid the Foo Fighters celebrating 25 years since the release of their self-titled debut album dropped July 4th, 1995, with Dave saying that if he could go back, he would dedicate the record to Cobain and Novoselic.
“I mean, it should be a lot of people but I would dedicate it to Krist and Kurt. I can’t say it’s the most important event in my entire life, but it’s safe to say that we wouldn’t be here right now talking about this if it weren’t for my time in Nirvana,” Grohl explained.
“I had 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.”
Check out ‘In Bloom’ by Nirvana:
