Dave Grohl, Times Like His

by Martin James

  Nirvana seemed to be publicly falling apart, but no one was prepared to confront the situation in print until Keith Cameron hit the controversy full on in an August issue of NME. Drawn from an interview which had taken place in Madrid, Spain, Cameron accused the band of going from “…nobodies to superstars to fuck-ups in the space of six months! That had to be a record.” (3)

  In the feature he asked Cobain directly if he was using heroin. The singer flatly denied it, even going to somewhat bizarre extremes to back up his claim. He even asked Cameron to feel his arms. Cobain considered a lack of track-marks to be proof positive that heroin wasn’t his drug of choice.

  The journalist then attacked the band for supposedly turning into the very creatures they had always claimed to despise: self-indulgent rock stars, with Cobain arriving late for interviews, refusing to do photos and generally forcing band and crew to accept his partner, Courtney Love into the fold. Again, this was not new territory for any major rock band, nor was Cobain’s eagerness to be around Love essentially anything to be chided, but because the Nirvana frontman was now being held up as a modern day punk icon, his every move and comment was being scrutinised.

  This feature understandably caused angry reactions with the entire band. One of the most ironic statements in the feature actually came from Grohl. Despite Nirvana being accused of embracing rock star arrogance, he used the platform to criticise such attitudes. Perhaps in an attempt to detract from the destructive goings-on within his band, he slammed U2’s Bono, whom he had met on the Irish band’s US tour earlier that year.

  “It was such a bummer (meeting Bono) because when I was thirteen I thought War was a great album! He reeks of rock-starness; he was not a human being. He wanted us to open up for them on tour, and I said ‘No, that’s not what we’re into.’ And he was saying ‘You owe it to the audience, you’ve got to take the next step! He was desperately trying to make that connection. ‘Do you like the blues?’ ‘No’. Do you like gospel?’ ‘Er, no, not really.’ ‘So what kind of music do you listen to?’ ‘Punk fuckin’ rock man!’ And then, of course, he tells me about punk rock and he was there and he was the meaning of punk rock. After meeting that guy it made me want to give up being in a rock ’n’ roll band.” (4)

  So Nirvana were too punk rock to support either Guns N’ Roses or U2, but not punk rock enough to avoid the pit falls of stardom. Grohl and Novoselic may have maintained some level of integrity, but Cobain simply dug an even bigger hole for himself in the interview. He had never made any claims to be a punk rocker, he insisted. He wasn’t anything to do with the underground. He even describes Nirvana as “a commercial rock band.” With Nevermind turning out to be the zeitgeist album of the time, Nirvana almost appeared to be separating themselves from their past.

  The increasingly unstable band atmosphere was exacerbated by complicating external factors. For a start, the past seemed intent on suing Nirvana! First of all, a 1960s band also called Nirvana attempted to stop Cobain et al from using their name. A delay in bringing the case meant it was dropped, despite the fact that the original Nirvana had even enjoyed some chart success in their day.

  Also displeased with Nirvana was Killing Joke, who filed a motion against them for intellectual theft. Killing Joke bassist Paul Raven maintained that Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ borrowed liberally from their 1985 hit ‘Eighties’. Novoselic went to court in Los Angeles to represent the band, however Killing Joke decided to drop the lawsuit for their own reasons. In his 2000 book, Eyewitness Nirvana: The Day-By-Day Chronicle, by Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna, Nirvana’s manager of the time, Danny Goldberg, admitted the band and management’s acknowledgement of the similarities. Goldberg said: “We met to discuss what (Nevermind’s) second single would be. We couldn’t decide between ‘Come as You Are’ and ‘In Bloom.’ Kurt was nervous about ‘Come As You Are’ because it was too similar to a Killing Joke song, but we all thought it was still the better song to go with. And, he was right, Killing Joke later did complain about it.” (5)

  The accusation from Killing Joke came as a huge disappointment to Grohl who had been a fan of the band – especially in their earliest incarnation. Ironically however, as will be detailed, Grohl would later play drums on Killing Joke’s 2003 album, The Death and Resurrection Show.

  “Dave and I had a few laughs about that (the court case) over the past year or so,” admitted Raven. “He mentioned it to me when I met him backstage at Pantera a couple of years back.” (6)

  Following the aforementioned birth of Frances Bean Cobain at Los Angeles Cedars Sina Hospital, the tabloids and music press were all offering their opinions on the Nirvana/Hole celebrity couple. Both Grohl and Novoselic became increasingly frustrated by the media’s obsession with Cobain’s private life and attempted to rescue the situation. While he was in Cedars Sina Hospital himself to detox, the drummer and bassist went to visit Cobain. They talked about getting down to recording the next album, and the possibility of doing some benefit gigs.

  The Nirvana story had become far too much about personalities and not enough about music and the only people that could rectify the situation were the band themselves. If their plan was some kind of counter attack, then it came on August 30 when Nirvana headlined the Reading Festival in the UK. Both before the actual weekend and on the day of the show, there had been much speculation about whether or not the band would appear due to Cobain’s drug use. There had also been numerous stories about the band’s impending demise, most recently in the shape of Cameron’s damning NME article.

  “… it was the classic, typical English journalism,” Cobain was quoted as saying. “Sensationalism. I have absolutely no respect for the English people. They make me sick. I thought I’d never say anything racist in my life, but those people are the most snooty, cocksure, anal people and they have absolutely no regard for people’s emotions. They don’t think of other humans at all. They’re the coldest people I’ve ever met.” (7)

  Perhaps as a reaction to what he saw as the British press’ invasive attitude towards his private life, Cobain came out fighting at the show. Dressed in a blonde ‘Courtney’ wig and a surgical smock, he entered the stage on a wheelchair before he stood up, shuffled to the mic, sang the opening line of ‘The Rose’ and pretended to collapse. It was a theatrical send-up of the recent stories, a very public debunk of the mythology that was growing around him.

  If such histrionics had seemed somewhere between Spinal Tap and an amateur dramatics troupe to some onlookers, then what followed was little short of breath-taking. Fired up with anger-fuelled passion, the band stormed through a triumphant set, Grohl’s drumming in particular driving the band to new extremes.

  Cobain’s earlier anti-media comments were carried on during the between-song banter as the band joked about their reported “demise.” “This isn’t our last show!” exclaimed Novoselic. “Yes, it is,” came Cobain’s reply. “I would like to officially and publicly announce that this is our last show.” “Today!” replied Novoselic. “Until we play on our November tour,” added Cobain. “Or do you want to record a record in November?” It was, as might be expected, a crowd-pleasing moment.

  This performance has now gone down in the annals of music history as one of the greatest festival gigs of all-time. The following week, the press had to agree: “Lethal and punishing between the bitter ‘Polly’ pill, and absolute ‘Teen Spirit’ abandon. And hell – heroin or no heroin – Nirvana can still kick out devastating rock ’n’ roll harder than any American band in a decade,” wrote Mary Anne Hobbs in the NME. Nobody present could argue with her.

  Unfortunately, aside from this magnificent gig, progress with Nirvana was slow and despite any hopes for a new album before the end of the year, nothing was forthcoming. The band had been recording demos with Jack Endino at Word of Mouth Studios, Seattle (formerly Reciprocal Studios), but they were a long way short of any kind of finished material. According to Endino, the sessions were very tense and at one time were even interrupted by the arrival of
the police, due to a noise complaint! Dave Grohl, it transpired, was playing his drums too loud.

  “His drumming was so loud, it was going right through the walls of the building,” recalled Endino. “It was only the second noise complaint we’d ever had! It was kind of embarrassing. But they were almost done at that point.” (8)

  Geffen opted instead to release an album of “Rare B-Sides, BBC Sessions, Original Demo Recordings, Out-takes, Stuff Never Before Available”; called Incesticide, the set was culled from a number of their early sessions. Grohl only performed on six of the tracks included: ‘Turnaround’, ‘Molly’s Lips’ and ‘Son of a Gun’ from the BBC Radio 1 John Peel Sessions and ‘Been a Son’, ‘Aneurysm’ and the only track credited to Cobain, Novoselic and Grohl. ‘(New Wave) Polly’ from the BBC Radio 1 Mark Goodier Show sessions. Released in December 1992, Incesticide proved to be something of a chore for the band’s newer fans, selling disastrously compared to Nevermind.

  While all eyes were on the release of Incesticide and Nirvana’s demos for their next album, Grohl sneaked out his own debut solo album. Called Pocketwatch, it appeared with surprisingly little fanfare. In fact, despite the fact that it was a solo album from the drummer in the biggest rock band of the decade, very few people picked up on it at all. Thus was partly because it was a cassette only release (in the punk rock tradition) and because he went by the unlikely moniker of Late!

  Pocketwatch was in fact the two aforementioned sessions he’d recorded while in Nirvana. He had opted to call himself Late! because he didn’t want to be seen as using his position in Nirvana to launch a solo career. It is also likely that Grohl didn’t have the confidence to put out a high profile record. Despite his ability to take care of things for other people, and also to block things out, Grohl was extremely insecure when it came to aspects of himself. Up until this point, with the exception of Dain Bramage, he had never actually instigated his own band.

  With Nirvana, any attempts to move his songwriting forward had been thwarted, a fact that must have left him feeling unsure of the songs he’d demo-ed. What’s more, it can’t have helped that his main band featured the talents of Cobain who was, in many people’s eyes, the finest songwriter of his generation.

  The Pocketwatch tape came out on the Simple Machines label, as part of their Tool Cassette series. The Arlington-based Simple Machines imprint was set up by Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thompson in 1990 in order to put out music by themselves and their friends. They pushed the DIY punk ethic by attempting to find creative ways to avoid the established music industry methods.

  The Tool Cassette Series was launched in 1991 as a way of keeping records in print without having the costly pressing process. They would quite literally dub copies from a master tape as orders came in.

  Talking about how she came to release the Late! tape, Jenny Toomey explained that she had been visiting the Laundry Room when she first heard it. “I thought it was great,” she explained, “and I hassled him for a tape. About six months later, he gave me one when I was visiting in Olympia. My label was releasing a series of cassettes that focused on music that was either unfinished, imperfect or finished and perfect by bands that no longer played out, like Geek, My New Boyfriend and Saturnine. It made perfect sense to ask Dave to add his solo tape to the list, and he said yes.” (9)

  The track listing for Pocketwatch was true to the chronology of the recording. ‘Pokey The Little Puppy’, ‘Petrol CB’, ‘Friend Of A Friend’, ‘Throwing Needles’, ‘Just Another Story About Skeeter Thompson’ and ‘Color Pictures Of A Marigold’ from the initial session, with ‘Hell’s Garden’, ‘Winnebago’, ‘Bruce’ and ‘Milk’ from the second session.

  The copy of Pocketwatch that Grohl gave to Toomey was second generation; this was what they used as a master! It would also eventually cause Simple Machines huge problems as news leaked out about the tape. Very quickly the master started to wear out. This wasn’t such a problem during the Nirvana times when Grohl remained tight-lipped about the project. But with the launch of Foo Fighters in 1995, orders for the tape went through the roof.

  “It’s sort of been a thorn in our side,” said Toomey in 1997. “Each mention of the cassette in Rolling Stone or wherever translates to piles of mail, and for the most part, these kids have never bought anything through the mail from an independent record company, so when they haven’t received their tape in two weeks they write us nasty notes about how we’ve stolen their $5 and their mothers are going to sue us. The Late! tape has broken many an intern! But the one strange redeeming quality of the tape is the tape itself. Almost every time I listen to it – even now at this point of definite saturation – I still have to think it’s a great record. It has a depth and vulnerability and crunch that you don’t find on the Foo Fighters’ record.” (10)

  With the master tape now degenerated beyond repair Pocketwatch has gone out of print forever. However there had been talks about remastering onto CD. Eventually Grohl decided that it wasn’t faithful to the original ethos behind the collection.

  “He went back and forth with the idea and then it fell off the face of the earth,” she said, “I think he’s worried about the quality. Which I can understand and appreciate, but his modesty is killing us! I know he also thinks it’s cooler to have it this way. Which it definitely is.” (11)

  Pocketwatch was a small statement of Grohl’s independence in the face of overwhelming corporate manoeuvring. It represented the side of him that intended to remain true to the original DIY underground beliefs of punk rock, as all around him became increasingly alien. It was his final anti-ego, DC hardcore project – despite being musically removed from those far off Washington days.

  “I always tried to keep them sort of a secret,” he told David Daley of Alternative Press in 1996. “I wouldn’t give people tapes. I always freaked out about that. I have the stupidest voice. I was totally embarrassed and scared that anyone would hear them,” he said. “I just wanted to see how poppy or how noisy a song I could write. It was always just for fun. You could do anything you wanted.”

  In January, 1993, a Nirvana performance found Grohl stepping from behind the drum kit to sing and play bass. It was at Morumbi Stadium in Sao Paulo, Brazil for an impromptu version of ‘Rio’ (by 80s stars Duran Duran). Cobain played drums, Novoselic played guitar and Grohl stood centre stage with mic in his face and bass in his hands. Despite being a nerve-racking moment for Grohl, he evidently enjoyed the experience. The track has never surfaced on bootleg however, so its quality remains a mystery to all but those who were present.

  While in South America, the band recorded some more demo material for their forthcoming album. What was beginning to come clear was that if Geffen were hoping for a Nevermind part 2, they were going to be disappointed. These songs were far more confrontational.

  Given Cobain’s comments about the band’s none-punk status, such a reversion to a more underground sound came as a welcome surprise. Cobain struggled to personally adapt to mainstream success. His heart still lay with abrasive rock ’n’ roll. Indeed, he even started saying how much he hated Nevermind. One thing was for certain, the next album wasn’t going to be for the “meat head jocks” or “the kids in Skid Row T-shirts”. This album was going to be for the band alone. And if people got it, then fine. If not, it would be their loss.

  As if to underline the band’s desire to kick back against the mainstream sound of Nevermind and embrace their punk roots, they enlisted US punk legend Steve Albini in the role of producer. Albini was perhaps best known for Chicago band Big Black. This was initially a solo venture with Albini plying his guitar shards over a Roland drum machine for the debut Lungs in 1982. The following Bulldozer EP found him working alongside Jeff Pezzai on bass and Santiago Durango on drums. The resulting sound was far more muscular than before. The mini album, Racer-X, took the pile-driving, industrial hardcore sonics to an even deeper extreme.

  With the introduction of a new bassist, Dave Riley, in 1985 the trio set to work on their deb
ut full-length album Atomizer. It proved to be a full-on, abrasive assault on the senses as guitars and vocals twisted around the relentless jackhammer of the drum programming.

  The Headache EP that followed in1987 was even more out on a chaotic extreme, thanks to the freeform psychosis that inhabited the records darkened grooves. Later that year, the band’s final album, Songs About Fucking, was released to critical acclaim. It remains one of the most belligerently confrontational albums to have emerged from the US punk scene. A fusion of genuflected chaos and adrenalised beats, like muscle and sinew tense to the point of near-destruction, the Big Black finale would go on to influence bands as diverse as Ministry/Revolting Cocks, Nine Inch Nails and, of course, Nirvana.

  Upon their demise, Albini formed the short-lived Rapeman, followed by the understated Shellac. He also forged a career as a producer working with, among others, The Pixies, The Breeders and, much later, PJ Harvey.

  Even though Jack Endino had recorded some of the demos for the next Nirvana album, he has claimed that he hadn’t set his sights on doing the album sessions. He instinctively knew that it would be a tense affair, with the band taking the almost perverse step into the non-commercial slipstream. When he heard that Albini had been approached, he was amazed.

  “While they were recording the demos with me they happened to mention, ‘Yeah, we were thinking of having Steve Albini do the record.’ And I was just like, wheeew! ‘Steve, huh, yeah? That’s a cool idea.’ That’s going to be amazing! But there’s going to be some fireworks. Because all the major label people and a lot of fans were going to want to hear Nevermind Version 2. And Steve, of course, would have no interest in making Nevermind Version 2. And I thought this could be a really cool Nirvana record, but I didn’t envy Steve at all. Steve is gonna get blamed, and shit is gonna fly, and that’s exactly what happened. Fortunately, Steve dealt with it the way he usually does; by telling everybody to fuck off.” (12)