Dave Grohl told Howard Stern in a new interview that he was never offered the job as Pearl Jam’s drummer, though Tom Petty did make him an offer.
“Petty, yes. Pearl Jam, no,” Grohl told Howard Stern. “I don’t know where the Pearl Jam thing came from. They never called and asked me to play drums with them.”
Grohl drummed for Petty on an episode of Saturday Night Live in late 1994.
“We had so much fun and we all got along so well,” Grohl remembered. “Afterwards he was like, ‘Man, that was good. It would be a shame if that’s the only time we do it’ sort of thing. And then he called me at home and he was like, ‘Look, here’s how we do it: You get your own bus and we don’t tour too hard … If you’re into it, come out and let’s do it for a little while.’”
Grohl said he had just started Foo Fighters and thought it would be “weird” to be a drummer in a band again.
“It would have just reminded me of being in Nirvana. It would have been sad, for me personally. It would have been an emotional thing to be behind the drum set every night and not have Kurt there.
“So I was like, ‘Nah, f**k it. I’m gonna try this other thing.’”
