Dave Grohl wanted to get back making music after the tragic end of Nirvana. He had ideas and had written some songs and put them onto
tape. But he needed a guitarist. The big question was, who was he going to get in the band?
Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Grohl describes his headspace in the months following Kurt Cobain’s death.
The manner of Nirvana’s ending sent Grohl and bassist Krist Novoselic into survival mode.
“I think that we all wound up in places that felt… I don’t want to say comfortable, but safe,” recalls Grohl. “And so when I went into the studio and recorded that stuff by myself, I felt safe there. And I can’t speak for Krist, but I think at that time it was like we were just trying to get our feet back on the ground. For me, that’s something that I thought, ‘Okay, well, music is the thing that’s going to rescue me.’”
The Foo Fighters frontman believes Novoselic found his feet by taking a step back from music and regrouping. And Grohl didn’t push him. “We didn’t really ever have that deeper, longer conversation,” he says.
If getting a band back together was part of the process for putting his heart back together, Grohl would have to start recruiting. Everyone knew him as the drummer from Nirvana. The last full-length album he released was In Utero and that was Seattle trio at their most confrontational.
