Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl during a radio interview in 1991. Credit: Julie Kramer, CC license 4.0, image cropped.
Dave Grohl appeared on the second episode of comedian, writer, and actor Whitney Cummings’ podcast Good For You, where he shared a story for which he is still embarrassed from his early days in Nirvana.
The band was the subject of a bidding war after their debut album Bleach, mostly on the strength of demos they recorded with producer Butch Vig, who would go on to record their followup Nevermind. Grohl told Cummings how this led to them having some fun at the expense of an eager young karaoke singer, which he now regrets:
You know what’s kind of sad? When I first joined Nirvana, the bass player Krist (Novoselic) lived in Tacoma, Washington. Which, there’s not really much…there’s nothing there. So, there are these like weird sort of lounges, and taverns, and bars where you would drink. This is fucking 30 years ago. But we went, Kris, and Kurt (Cobain), and Krist’s ex-wife Shelli (Hyrkas), and I once went to this bar where they had a karaokee thing. And at the time we were being, kind of groomed by all these different record companies. We were getting bidded on by all these (companies)…
But we had so many A&R guy cards. And we got wasted one night and gave an A&R guy card to a karaoke singer. Is that terrible? That’s bad…
I don’t remember which—it was either Kurt, or me, or Krist, and we gave it to her under the impression that we were an A&R guy and we were going to make her famous. Is that bad?
Cummings said she felt like the incident still haunts Grohl, to which he said it did and he still thinks about it.
“I feel like that person still has that card,” he said.
“For sure,” Cummings agreed.
The pair then transitioned into a conversation about TikTok, with Cummings educating the musician on the app and its purpose.
Watch Grohl tell the story of Nirvana giving false hope to a karaoke singer below. The video is cued up to the relevant portion of the lengthy interview.
Grohl Calls Foo Fighters “Dad Rock”
In addition to sharing the above anecdote, the Foo Fighters frontman said he considers his band’s music to be “dad rock.”
“You know the whole dad rock thing? We’re totally dad rock,” he said. “Look, I’m 50 years old, I have fucking gray hair…But the funny thing is, I have never considered our band cool and I like that.”
“We’ve just never been hip or cool,” he continued. “And I think that the reason why we’re still here is because we do kind of disconnect ourselves from the popular stuff that’s going on, but also because what the fuck do we care. Like honestly, I just wanna play music. Having watched a lot of my friends not survive, I just want to be alive and play music and I really don’t give a fick if we’re cool or not.”
Those remarks come around the hour and seven minute mark in the video above.
Grohl also shared of the upcoming Foo Fighters album that it is “weird.” Can’t wait to find out what that means.
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