Dave Grohl, Times Like His

by Martin James

  In the US, Rolling Stone’s Ira Robbins was perhaps more guarded, but nonetheless positive: “…the thrashing Nevermind boasts an adrenalised pop heart and incomparably superior material, captured with roaring clarity by co-producer Butch Vig… Too often, underground bands squander their spunk on records they’re not ready to make, then burn out their energy and inspiration with uphill touring. Nevermind finds Nirvana at the crossroads – scrappy garage land warriors setting their sights on a land of giants.”(21)

  In 2001 Grohl talked about his feelings upon hearing the finished album. “Hearing your music played on the big speakers for the first time after the track’s been completed – that’s the payoff, like when ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ first came through the speakers. The only demos we’d done of that song were on a boombox – we were used to hearing it sound like a shitty bootleg. All of a sudden, you have Butch Vig making it sound like Led Zeppelin’s IV. And as we were mixing the album, Krist and Kurt and I would take a tape of the songs and just drive around the Hollywood Hills, listening to it. That was something else.” (22)

  The band had already embarked on a coast-to-coast tour of the US when Nevermind was released. By October 12, the album had already gone gold. Their audience started to change accordingly. Alongside the hardcore grunge kids that had supported the Sub Pop Nirvana, there appeared a new breed of fan. The MTV college kids. For the band whose hearts still lay firmly in punk’s underground, this change of audience was alarming.

  Indeed, both Grohl and Novoselic would regularly talk in interview about these new fans as being jocks and meatheads. When asked a couple of years later if he regretted the things his drummer and bassist had said, Cobain admitted, “Yeah, I do, I do, but the point we were trying to get across was never stated in the right way. I was upset at finding myself having to play in front of really rude, sexist jerks, I’d never had any desire to play to people like that and never expected to have to.

  You know, a person can say a lot of stupid things when they’re going through stressful times in their life. I don’t regret the majority of things I was trying to convey, but they didn’t translate right. And there were a handful of things I can remember that I really regret us saying. Like when Chris said, ‘For the most part, heavy metal kids are just stupid.’ I couldn’t say that. I was a heavy metal kid at one time. That’s just too insulting, it’s too extreme a thing to say. You have to elaborate on things like that or not say them at all.” (23)

  While Grohl and Novoselic often busied themselves with verbally attacking their new audience in interviews, Cobain’s already notorious mood swings became increasingly extreme. By the time Jack Endino’s Skin Yard supported them in Amsterdam, he sensed the band, and especially Cobain, might be buckling under the pressure of new found fame.

  “In Amsterdam, he [Kurt] wasn’t doing too good. It was a really weird show. Kurt was really pissed off; there were all these people with cameras and movie cameras on the stage, and he was a little out of tune and he was very angry at these cameras: ‘Get the hell off my stage!’ And backstage he was really uneasy, he looked really pale. Everybody seemed to be really uneasy and very unhappy. Like suddenly the success was starting to bother them because people were starting to come at them. Suddenly people wouldn’t leave them alone.” (24)

  Grohl put the band’s frailty down to the their inability to deal emotionally with such a huge change in their lives after so many years of slumming it in the punk tradition. “There was that punk-rock guilt,” he admitted. “Kurt felt, in some way, guilty that he had done something that so many people had latched onto. The bigger the shows got, the farther we got from our ideal. We were all in such a weird state. It was such a whirlwind that no one really had any time to feel comfortable with it.” (25)

  Following the US tour, the band returned to Europe for another string of dates. This time they opened at Bristol’s Bierkeller on November 4 before travelling to London’s Astoria the next day, which was followed by Wulfrun Hall in Wolverhampton. The following day found them recording their first ever live TV appearance for The Word on Channel 4. Cobain introduced their rendition of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ with the immortal words “I’d just like to say that Courtney Love, of the pop group ‘Hole’, is the best fuck in the world”.

  The tour continued through Europe before returning in November for yet more dates. No one could ever accuse Nirvana of resting on their laurels. On December 7, at Rennes, Transmusicales Festival in France, the band opened with a cover of The Who’s ‘Baba O’Riley’, with Grohl on lead vocals. Cobain’s voice was packing up due to the intensive touring. Soon after, the band decided to cancel the rest of the European tour the press statement explained, “Kurt Cobain was rendered virtually mute with a viral throat infection.”

  In the middle of that UK tour, Nevermind went platinum. On January 11, 1992, however, the album did the unthinkable for a band that had grown out of the US alternative punk scene – it went to #1 on the Billboard Album chart. Furthermore, it would return to the top spot again on February 1 and by 1996 would sell almost fourteen million copies worldwide. Seven million of those were in the US alone.

  With the band’s huge success came new frictions. Cobain started to become uncertain about the royalties. Cobain’s argument was quite clear as to why he deserved more money. They were his songs. “At the time, when we were signing contracts and stuff like that it was always divided equally and that was fine,” he explained in 1993. “But I never realised that I would become a millionaire and then all of a sudden, need money. It’s a ridiculous situation really… Well, we (the members of the band) didn’t agree on it right way. It took a bit of convincing on my part. I still believe in all-for-one, one-for-all y’know. We’re a group, we’re a three piece. Chris and Dave are equally as important as I am, as far as persona of the band goes, in the way we’re perceived. We’re [perceived as a band]. But I had written 99 per cent of the songs and many were the times when I’ve taken Chris’ bass away from him and shown him what to play, and sat behind Dave’s drum kit and shown him what to play, stuff like that. I don’t enjoy being in that sort of dictatorship position, but I came up with the songs at home, and introduced the songs to the band and I could be asking for a lot more.” (26)

  But the potential for arguments over money wasn’t the only factor gnawing away at the band’s status quo. They were also increasingly aware of the unhappy effect touring was having on the camaraderie they’d once cherished. For Grohl, this was especially difficult. Having toured extensively with Scream, he had far more experience of the bond that exists between members of a band. When any one person loses that feeling of belonging, it is easy for them to suddenly feel isolated.

  Dave Grohl was becoming increasingly isolated. Partly due to the fact that Cobain and Novoselic had a very tight friendship, but also because the stresses of touring in the spotlight meant that he could never enjoy the relaxed intimacy of friends just hanging out together.

  “Franz and Pete (Stahl) are like my brothers,” he said of his previous band cohorts in comparison to relationships within Nirvana. “We spent all our time together, in the van going to gigs, sleeping on friend’s floors. In Nirvana, we didn’t hang out. We’d pull into town on the tour bus, do interviews, play in front of thousands of people, do more interviews, go to the hotel, and watch TV until you fell asleep.” (27)

  There were two more relationships within the band dynamic that were beginning to cause problems. Both were a part of Cobain’s life, and both caused Cobain to become subject to even more extreme mood swings; they were Courtney Love and his drug use. With both taking a stronger role in the frontman’s life, Grohl especially, started to feel like staying with Nirvana might not be worth the hassle.

  “There would be times when we would really connect – smile and laugh and feel like a band. And there were times when you felt lost and questioned what you were doing there,” he has said. “There were times when I had to back off completely and think, ‘I’m just the drummer
in this band.’ And there were other times when we’d all share something really beautiful, like a show or recording or just a vocal harmony. That’s when you really felt like you were part of something great.” (28)

  Whatever the positive aspects to life in Nirvana, the fact remained that a huge separation was opening up between Cobain and the rest of the band. “Being in a band is like being in a relationship,” he explained. “Whether it’s a love relationship or just a friend [thing], there’s people that you just connect with for no real reason at all, but you feel the same [about a lot of things].

  When Kurt was into doing drugs, Krist and I didn’t do that stuff, and Kurt did, so there was just this line drawn,” Grohl said. “People who do drugs and people who don’t. And we would hear about it the next day. Like when we played at Roseland at the New Music Seminar [in New York], Kurt died the night before [and had to be resuscitated], and I didn’t find out about that until after the show. So I was totally oblivious to what was going on.” (29) Cobain’s problems with drugs have been extensively chronicled elsewhere, but suffice to say, it was becoming a debilitating factor for the band.

  Although Nirvana were riding on the crest of a commercial wave (and Kurt and Courtney celebrated the birth of their first child, Frances Bean Cobain, on August 18), the cracks within the band were starting to appear. Dave Grohl was faced with the challenge of trying to remain focussed on the band or simply moving to greener pastures. He chose to block events out.

  “People have tantrums, people’s tempers flare,” he philosophically explained. “But I can block everything out. I’m not really an emotional person at all. Just because I’d rather ignore emotion than confront it, so when it comes down to really heavy shit, it kinda breezes right past me. I don’t really want to get involved in anyone else’s problems and I don’t want to be the cause of anyone else’s, so I just lay low. I think maybe that’s what’ll keep me sane through this whole trip.” (30)

  But the trip was about to go completely insane.

  Notes

  1. unknown

  2. Bleached Wails by Everett True (Melody Maker) October 21 1989

  3. Sup Pop – Seattle: Rock City by Everett True (Melody Maker) March 16 1989

  4. ‘Love Buzz’ Review by Everett True (Melody Maker) February 18 1989

  5. Kills All Known Germs by Edwin Pouncey (NME) September 2 1989

  6. Bleach review by Edwin Pouncey (NME) July 8 1989

  7. Verse Chorus Verse: The Recording History of Nirvana by Gillian G. Gaar (Goldmine)1997

  8. ibid

  9. Eat, Drink, Breathe (and Sometimes Sleep) Music An Interview with Dave Grohl by Fish Rock and Tim Holsopple (www.manateebound.com) 2001

  10. Dave Grohl Feature by Eric Brace

  11. Unknown

  12. Heaven Can Wait by Push (Melody Maker) December 15 1990

  13. ibid

  14. Nevermind Ten Years After by David Fricke (Rollingstone.com) 2001

  15. Verse Chorus Verse: The Recording History of Nirvana by Gillian G. Gaar (Goldmine)1997

  16. ibid

  17. Nevermind Ten Years After by David Fricke (Rollingstone.com) 2001

  18. Unknown

  19. Nevermind review by Everett True (Melody Maker) September 14 1991

  20. Nevermind review by Steve Lamacq (NME) September 21 1991

  21. Nevermind review by Ira Robbins (Rollling Stone) October 1991

  22. Nevermind Ten Years After by David Fricke (Rollingstone.com) 2001

  23. Dark Side of the Womb by The Stud Brothers (Melody Maker) August 21 1993

  24. Verse Chorus Verse: The Recording History of Nirvana by Gillian G. Gaar (Goldmine)1997

  25. Nevermind Ten Years After by David Fricke (Rollingstone.com) 2001

  26. Dark Side of the Womb by The Stud Brothers (Melody Maker) August 21 1993

  27. Dave Grohl Feature by Eric Brace (www.unomas.com/features/foofighters.html)

  28. Nevermind Ten Years After by David Fricke (Rollingstone.com) 2001

  29. Unknown

  30. Love Will Tear Us Apart by Keith Cameron (NME) August 29 1992

  3

  RECLAIMING PUNK FROM THE MTV MASSES

  What do you say to the drummer in a successful band?

  What’s your name again?

  Dave Grohl started 1992 on both a euphoric high and at the point of near-exhaustion from the previous few months. The success of Nirvana had been a shock to the system and he dealt with it in the only way he knew how – by playing live. With Cobain on an enforced sabbatical, Grohl and Novoselic joined forces with Buzz Osborne of the Melvins for what was to be the first of two Osborne-related projects that year.

  Performing as Melvana, the trio played on January 15 at Crocodile Cafe, Seattle. The show featured covers of many of the trio’s favourite punk songs, including two by Flipper, Sacrifice and Way Of The World that were bootlegged as a 7” single on Teen Sensation Records.

  The second instalment in the Osborne recording came with the July 1992 release of the aforementioned King Buzzo by Buzz Osborne on Boner Records. This was a part of The Melvins’ pastiche of the Kiss solo albums, in which head shots of each member of the band were shown in full make-up on otherwise identical sleeves. The Melvins presented the same concept with a punkier look.

  King Buzzo featured four tracks – ‘Isabella’, ‘Porg’, ‘Annum’ and ‘Skeeter Dave’. Grohl played drums and provided vocals for the last, a version of his own ‘Another Story About Skeeter Thompson’, which would turn up later that year on his Pocketwatch cassette album (more of which later). For the King Buzzo release, however, Grohl hid behind the nom de plume of Dale Nixon.

  The friction over royalties with Cobain festered beneath the surface for quite some time following an initial spat in March, 1992. However, when Cobain suggested that the new arrangement be backdated to include Nevermind, the band came close to splitting.

  Grohl explained how “everybody was saying, ‘Let him have this one because the band will break up. You guys could make fifteen million dollars next year. Just let him have this one.’” (1)

  Fortunately, the situation – a common problem for bands who have enjoyed major success – was eventually reconciled. However, it still offered the first signs of the increased division that had started to appear between Cobain and the rest of the band. Nirvana went triple-platinum with an album that, oddly enough, many were now complaining was far too glossy and spiritually removed from their punk roots. How fickle the music-loving public can be sometimes.

  To add to these apparent internal band divisions, the media had started to focus increasingly on Cobain. Given this solo platform, he chose to bring up the subject of money on numerous occasions. In one interview with journalist and personal friend Everett True, (in which short individual interviews with Grohl and Novoselic appear, seemingly as an after-thought) Cobain would complain that outsiders were making money out of the Nirvana name.

  “The corporate side of our image is so exploitative, it’s one of the only ways we can retain our dignity.” He argued, “One of the main things I regret about the success of this band is… (he brandishes a copy of a Nirvana comic book and a Nirvana poster booklet). We’re being totally raped by these [people], we have no control over that stuff. They sell hundreds of thousands of those magazines and we don’t get a dime out of it, we don’t even have a say-so in what pictures are used and what quotes are re-written.” (2)

  It’s an outburst that shows what unhappy bedfellows success and artistic integrity are. Especially so for Cobain. Yet, some observers argued that Cobain’s suggestion he should have control over quotes and images used also showed the difficult and fine line he was walking between creative integrity and egotism. The Nirvana history was not, they suggested, only there for the band to rewrite. A few years later, artists like Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey would be publicly lambasted for suggesting such a defined control over the information generated around them. But for Nirvana, these critics complained, it was being attribute
d to a sense of creative integrity.

  To be fair, however, many major acts did subsequently insist on closer controls and veto of articles about them and images of them. For pop artists, it is often put down to being a diva and, indeed, some punters love them even more for it. Cobain was in that odd position of coming from a punk background, an ethos that sometimes stifles an artist’s licence to defend what he sees are his rights, at the risk of being called “a sell-out”. Although it is unrealistic for a public figure to control every word or photograph about themselves – take biographies such as this one as an example – it is also understandable that they might become concerned when they do not even respect the material being produced about them. He was in a no-win situation. Unfortunately, with Nirvana being the biggest band on the planet, it was inevitable.

  Cobain’s increased dominance of the media spotlight seemed out of keeping with the original ethos of the band. To further highlight his growing distance from the other two band members, Courtney Love was taking a featuring role in his life. Indeed, the couple were now referred to in some media circles as ‘Kurtney’. Publicly, at least, Novoselic and Grohl were becoming seen as just the bassist and drummer respectively.

  Speculation surrounding Cobain’s apparent drug dependence was also placing him in an unwanted spotlight away from the concerns of the band. On June 23, the morning after the band’s performance at Northern Ireland’s King’s Hall, Cobain collapsed. Despite claims that he was suffering from a stomach ulcer exacerbated by a love of junk food, it later transpired that the collapse was a result of methadone withdrawal. Cobain had apparently forgotten to take his methadone on the previous evening and had been too sick that morning to take it. Matters were not helped by his severe stomach ailment, which many close to the singer said plagued his entire life. Rumours about his health and well-being were rife.