A cousin of an Irish hitch-hiker, who might be the person Dave Grohl talked about in a viral video, is hoping Grohl will get in touch. In a 2021 interview, Grohl, who was the drummer for Nirvana, mentioned meeting a hitch-hiker in Ireland after Kurt Cobain died in 1994. This was an emotional time for Grohl as he contemplated his next move in his career.
Grohl said he picked up a hitch-hiker wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, which made him realize he needed to get back to making music. This story became popular after a video of Lorcan Dunne, the hitch-hiker, went viral on X.
In the video, Dunne remembers being on holiday with his family in the Beara Peninsula in 1994. He was hitch-hiking when he saw a car with Grohl inside. Dunne was wearing a Nirvana t-shirt, and he noticed Grohl looked shocked before driving away. At the time, Dunne’s cousin, Ciaran Tighe, was with him, and they thought it was unlikely it was really Grohl.
“After Kurt died and the band was over, I did a bunch of soul-searching and I decided that I’m going to disappear. I’m going to go to the most remote place on Earth,” said Grohl during an interview with the New Yorker.
“I went to the Ring of Kerry in Ireland, where I’ve been before, it’s so beautiful there.
“I was driving around in my rental car on a country road and I saw this hitch-hiker kid. I thought: ‘Well, maybe I’ll pick him up’. And, as I got closer to him, I saw that he had a Kurt Cobain t-shirt on.
“It was Kurt’s face looking back at me, in the middle of nowhere. I realised like: “Oh, I can’t outrun this. So I need to go home and f***ing get back to work’. And so I did.”
Dunne only recently saw Grohl’s interview and realized he might have been the hitch-hiker Grohl talked about. During a family gathering, Dunne and Tighe figured out the hitch-hiker in Grohl’s story was Dunne.
“We hitched up to this place to go swimming. I was running ahead and I saw a car there, so I thought I’d run up and hitch,” Mr Dunne said in a video.
“I looked into who was sitting in the passenger seat – but it was David Grohl. I didn’t recognise him at first, but I saw this look of shock on the guy’s face.
“I had a Nirvana t-shirt on with Kurt Cobain on it. It was black tie-dye, the one with Kurt where he has the mascara on his face, one of his iconic looks.
“I saw the look of shock and the next thing, the car just tore off, away. And I turned around to Ciaran (his cousin) and I was like: ‘That was David Grohl, lad’. And nobody believed me.”
Mr Dunne said he only saw the interview with Dave Grohl talking about a “hitch-hiker kid” two weeks ago.
“And I was like: ‘There you go, that was me’,” he added.
Mr Dunne’s cousin, Ciaran Tighe, was with Lorcan that day and said the family stayed in Allihies.
“Allihies technically isn’t the Ring of Kerry, but it’s the next peninsula down in West Cork,” he said.
“We hitch-hiked a good bit when we were down there. We were in the middle of nowhere. We said: ‘Lorcan, there’s not a hope that was David Grohl’.
“It’s like if someone said to you: ‘I think I saw Bono’, and we said: ‘No, there’s no chance that was Bono’, and you just sort of move on. So we moved on.”
The duo solved the mystery only recently during a family celebration in Bantry, Co Cork.
Ciaran said: “We figured it out. Lorcan called me over and he said: ‘Do you remember down the Allihies?’ And I said: ‘Yeah’. I honestly didn’t know where the story was going. Then, he said: ‘And I’d worn my Nirvana t-shirt’.
“And as soon as he said that, I knew exactly where it was going. I said: ‘Oh my God, you’re the hitch-hiker’.”
Ciaran added there is still a “chance” that the American rock star will get in touch with Lorcan after he sees the viral video.
“I know from Lorcan’s point of view, that’s what he would love,” said Ciaran.
https://x.com/eointighe/status/1824156995324092518
