The album that helped Dave Grohl get over Kurt Cobain’s death

The death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain came as a shock to the entire music world. Although Cobain’s struggles with mental health and drug addiction had become well-known by 1994, no one could have imagined the extremes that Cobain would eventually go to – least of all Dave Grohl, Cobain’s bandmate and one-time roommate.

From the time he had moved up to Seattle in the early 1990s, Grohl and Cobain had been close. Grohl was one of the only guests at Cobain’s wedding to Courtney Love, and the pair originally split a dilapidated apartment together before the recording of Nevermind in 1991. Cobain’s death soiled Grohl on music for a short while.

“For a while after Kurt died, I couldn’t even listen to music,” Grohl told the NME in 2013. “I hated turning on the radio for fear that I’d hear a Nirvana song or any sort of sad music. Anything melancholy just made me so depressed. I would listen to shit like Ace Of Base. I got really into that! I was listening to some really ridiculous shit.”

“But I had a record called A National Healthcare by a band called The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black that I particularly remember,” Grohl added. “They were this sort of New York performance art band and were great. I remember Frank Black’s Teenager Of The Year came out that year around that time, that was a really great record. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion record Orange came out around the same time, that was another great record.”

It would be these records that helped Grohl overcome his initial stage of grief. For a short while, Grohl had no idea what his next move was going to be. After getting his love of music revived, Grohl was sure that he had to continue, but would it be as a drummer in another band?

“That was a funny time with me musically because I just didn’t really want to hear any music,” Grohl added. “Then I realised, ‘Oh wait, it’s music that’s going to heal me. What am I doing? I should be listening to music. I should be making music that will make me feel better.’ And it did.”

It would only be a few months after Cobain’s death that Grohl decided that he wanted to be in charge of his own musical output. Along with producer Barrett Jones, Grohl sequestered himself in Robert Lang Studios to record his favourite songs that had been written in the years prior to Cobain’s death. These songs eventually became the first album by Grohl’s next project, Foo Fighters.

Check out ‘This Is a Call’ down below.