Dave Grohl Recalls The First Show He Ever Played With Nirvana

The date was October 10, 1990. The place was North Shore Surf Club in Olympia, Washington. Dave Grohl was gearing up to play his first show with Nirvana after joining the band just a few weeks earlier. The drummer recently chatted with Kerrang! about the experience.

“I had just joined the band, like, f**king three weeks before that, and we had rehearsed, I dunno, five or six times. We wanted to have one show before this short tour of England that we had committed to do," he recalled. "There was this small club that held maybe 600 or 700 people down the street from where Kurt [Cobain] and I were living, and it was very last minute. I think they announced the show a week before it happened. We went in and soundchecked, I left to get something to eat, I came back and there was a line around the block! I had never seen that at any gig that I had ever played. There were hundreds of people, and it f**king blew my mind."

"I remember calling my mother and saying, ‘Mom, there are at least 300 people in line right now!’ Which is more than I think ever came to a Scream show, and it was f**king magical," he continued. "We started with Love Buzz, and I’ll never forget it, the audience just exploded. We were tight, and it was chaotic, and it felt just right and it sounded great. Afterwards, I was on cloud nine. The band I’d been in before Scream was also a three-piece, and there’s something about the energy of a three-piece. There’s also something about the fragility of a three-piece. If something falls apart, it really f**king falls apart – there’s not a lot of middle ground. It’s a house of cards. I remember afterwards thinking, ‘Oh, this is good, I like this.’ It was great!”

Listen to audio from that legendary show below.

Photo: Getty Images


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