Danny Goldberg was recently asked about Dave Grohl in a new Forbes interview. He discussed how Grohl wrote music in ‘secret’ in hotel rooms while on tour with Nirvana. Goldberg will release his new Kurt Cobain book ‘Serving the Servant’ next week
Forbes asked, “Shifting focus to Dave Grohl for a second: He would apparently bring a guitar with him on Nirvana’s tours and write songs in secret from his hotel rooms—not wanting to bounce from band to band as a drummer the rest of his life. How aware were you of his songwriting talent, and why didn’t he end up singing with Atlantic while you were there?”
Goldberg said, “I had left Atlantic, by the time the Foo Fighters were around, I think I was at Mercury. I don’t really remember where I was. But my memory, I don’t think I was still at Atlantic. I don’t really remember. I don’t think that they had working with me at the top of their list, [Nirvana co-manager John] Silva and Dave. The kind of deal I recall they were looking for—and they did the exact right thing; Silva’s a brilliant manager, he’s done a great, great job—it was more of a distribution-type deal, I think, than a full-blown record deal. That’s my memory of it.
I never had a meeting or discussion about it. I surely had no idea they were gonna be that big. But as a I describe, I didn’t have that kind of relationship with Dave, you know? I was pulled by different forces in my life at difference times, and once Kurt and Courtney were together, which was within a month of Nevermind being released, there was a certain split, and my clear role and predilection was kind of with Kurt and Courtney. Now over the years I’ve stayed in close touch with Krist because we always had this other thing in common, which was our shared interest in American politics, civil liberties and so on. But honestly the first time I ever talked to Krist about Kurt, since Kurt died, was when I wrote this book.
In all the ensuing twenty-some years we talked about politics, that was what we kind of talked about. It was not a musical or music business conversation I’d have with Krist. And I just didn’t have that kind of relationship with Dave, so you’d have to ask them. I just know it was never a serious discussion. I’m sure if John had said, ‘Hey, Dave wants to meet with you,’ I definitely would’ve met with them, but I don’t remember ever getting that call.”
