Former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg recently published his Kurt Cobain book ‘Serving the Servant,’ and he discussed Dave Grohl’s reaction to Cobain taking more Nirvana songwriting copyrights for himself, leading to him making more money. Grohl didn’t have much of a reaction to the financial hit, according to a Washington Post review.
Cobain’s bandmates watched their roles in his life shrink as Love’s expanded. Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl are presented as distant, easygoing figures, bit players in a story that is partly theirs. Even Cobain’s decision to take lucrative songwriting copyrights away from his bandmates “generated only minor stress,” Goldberg writes, unconvincingly.
In concert, Grohl began singing harmony vocals, presaging his eventual role as lead singer of the Foo Fighters. Goldberg suggests Cobain found this unnerving. “I hear Dave doing harmonies every night and he is a much better singer than you might think,” he told Goldberg, who adds, “Kurt’s tone had a touch of envy to it, as if he were looking over his shoulder in more ways than one.”
NewsOK wrote in a review:
Goldberg’s Cobain is a figure of childlike sweetness, sharp humor and great gloom. He was a savvy marketer and tireless creative force who was fiercely devoted to his family, and plagued by stomach problems that baffled his doctors (Goldberg gently suggests that they might have been psychosomatic).
Goldberg drops no bombshells, but “Serving the Servant,” which features recollections from Courtney Love, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and others in Cobain’s orbit, enlisted mostly to fill in gaps in the author’s memory, is empathetic and absorbing, illuminating but not gossipy.
