Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl discussed Kurt Cobain’s heroin use and how he went to rehab, leading to a break. Dave Grohl previously discussed what it felt like to be on mushrooms.
He told Kerrang, “A lot happened after that. In the 12 months between Reading ’91 and Reading ’92 when we headlined, the band had exploded… and imploded. We went from being a three-piece band in a splitter van with a tour manager and a monitor guy, to selling millions of records, and a lot changed. It was a pretty chaotic 12 months.
Kurt got strung out and wound up having to go to rehab. I remember we finished that tour in early ’92, and we had toured America, we had toured Europe, we’d been to Australia and Japan, and we ended in Hawaii. By the time we got there we thought, ‘Okay, we need to fucking chill out, because the world has gone crazy – not just ours but everybody else’s.’ So, we took a break, and in that time Kurt had a kid, and had his ups and downs. It was chaos.
“I remember showing up to Reading ’92 and there being so many rumours that we weren’t going to play, that we had cancelled. I walked backstage and some of my best friends in bands that were opening would see me and say, ‘What are you doing here?’ And I’d go, ‘We’re fucking headlining!’ And they’d be like, ‘You’re actually going to play?!’ I didn’t realise there was any question that we were going to play. I knew within myself I was questioning if we could play, but I knew we were going to try.
“The show was a really reassuring, genuinely magical moment of everything coming together at the right time.”
Dave Grohl also discussed drugs in a SMH interview.
“Music is my life, it’s all I’ve known and I don’t see a reason to stop because I actually wake up and wanna do it. My music makes me want to live and that’s a beautiful thing,” he says.
Grohl formed the Foo Fighters in Seattle in 1994 – the same year he lost his bandmate and front man of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain. He triumphed over tragedy at a time when he felt it was impossible.
“It’s been one hell of a ride ever since,” says Grohl of the music journey he’s been on over the past few decades.
A few years off turning 50, the guitarist and drummer says he wouldn’t have survived the business as long as he did if he had kept up his early behaviour.
“One thing I did before Nirvana became popular was I stopped doing drugs,” he says. “By the time I was 20, I just stopped doing that stuff because it didn’t make me feel emotionally, mentally or physically healthy. I have a drink every now and again, sure, but if you want to weather a career like I’ve done, you can’t do this shit half-assed. It’s challenging and you have to try and keep your head – there’s a lot going on around you all the time and with time you get better at keeping on top of it all.”
