Dave Grohl discussed going on a driving holiday across Ireland after Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994 to try to put his memories of Nirvana behind him in a new Hot Press interview, though he did pick up a hitchhiker in a Nirvana t-shirt.
“The Nirvana experience was such a whirlwind,” he says. “It all happened so quickly – exploded without any warning. And then it just disappeared. Life had changed so much it was almost like you had to find something to hold onto so that you didn’t get swept away. Once it was over, I couldn’t imagine stepping on stage or sitting down at a drum stool and playing music any more. It would just bring me back to the heartbreaking place of losing Kurt.”
“A long time went by where it felt that music was going to break my heart again. Then I realized that, actually, music was the one thing that was going to heal it. I had been recording music by myself for years without ever playing it for anyone. I thought that going down to the studio at the end of the street would be therapeutic. I didn’t think it would become a band – and I sure as fuck didn’t think it was going to be a band for 20 years.”
“You have to understand for me, Nirvana is more than it is for you,” he said. “It was a really personal experience. I was a kid. Our lives were lifted and then turned upside down. And then our hearts were broken when Kurt died. The whole thing is much more personal than the logo or the t-shirt or the iconic image.”
“I felt I had to do it – to exorcise something in my soul,” he says of starting over with the Foo’s self-titled debut LP from 1995. “The intention of this band from day one has always been to keep the ball rolling: as musicians, as human beings, as friends. To feel like life keeps moving forward. We still feel like that every time we make a record – every time we step on stage. We feel like life is moving forward and that we’re not looking back.”
