Washington DC hardcore band Scream began their career in the early 1980s, before the usual things that weigh a band down led to them splitting up in 1990. They might have been a footnote in music history only known to a close circle of fans were it not for an enthusiastic 17 year old kid who joined the band as their new drummer in 1987.
A gangly youth full of enthusiasm and bearing a rather striking resemblance to Animal from The Muppets, this kid’s name was Dave Grohl. Grohl spent three years in the band before it broke up after their troubled bassist Skeeter Thompson went walkabout on tour. Frustrated by the breakup of Scream, Grohl replaced Chad Channing in a then still relatively unknown band named Nirvana, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Scream’s front man Pete Stahl went on to work as a tour manager for the likes of Rammstein, Coheed & Cambria, Queens of the Stone Age and Foo Fighters, where he maintained his friendship with Grohl. Now it appears things are turning full circle, with the band reforming with their original pre-Grohl lineup, and Grohl is set to record a live EP of theirs in his 606 Studio.
Reminiscing of the time that Grohl joined the band as a wide eyed kid, Stahl has revealed to Spinner that he was a powerhouse drummer even then. He says “Our drummer Kent Stacks wanted to leave. He had just had a baby and he didn’t want to tour anymore. Now he can go on tour, his daughter is teaching at a University in Wilmington, N.C.. But so Skeeter’s like “You gotta see this f—ing drummer play. He is f—in’ badass,” so I went down to [venue] D.C. Space and he was playin’ with his band Dain Bramaged, and everybody in the room was watching the drummer, not the band. I was like “Wow.”
Check out Scream with Grohl on drums in 1988:
