Nirvana’s music has made its way into Dave Grohl’s kids’ lives.
The ‘Lithium’ group’s former drummer used to switch off the Grunge pioneers’ songs as soon as they came on the radio – because it was difficult listening to their music following the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain aged 27 in 1994.
However, the heavy rock legend now enjoys hearing Violet, 15, Harper, 12, and seven-year-old Ophelia – whom he has with wife Jordyn Blum – singing to every word of their tracks on their car journeys.
Speaking on Dave Berry’s Breakfast Show on Absolute Radio, Dave said: “There was a long time when a song would come on and I would just turn it off.
“I don’t want to hear that. It would bring back lots of difficult memories.
“But now I’ll be driving with my kids in the car and a Nirvana song will come on, and they will start singing it and they know the words. We don’t listen to it at home, but somehow it’s become a part of their lives now, and it’s cool.”
The 52-year-old star then shared a “beautiful insight” his daughter Harper told him when she quizzed the Foo Fighters frontman on his late bandmate and their music.
Speaking about the 30th-anniversary of their landmark 1991 LP ‘Nevermind’ and promoting his new tome, ‘The Storyteller’, Dave recalled: “She said, ‘Dad, how old were you when you were in this band?’ I said, ‘Well I was probably 21 or 22 when we recorded it’ and then she said, ‘What was Kurt like?’
“I said, ‘He was really sweet, you know, he was kind of shy, a little reserved and could be sort of quiet’. She said, ‘Was he shy to people he didn’t know or to people he did know?’ and I said, ‘Well, a little bit of both’.
“She said, ‘Wow, that’s really interesting that someone that could be so shy could write these songs and stand in front of hundreds of thousands of people and sing them’. I thought what a beautiful insight for a 12-year-old … she was asking me about my life then because she wanted to understand it through the music.”
Listen to Dave Berry on the Absolute Radio Breakfast show Monday to Friday from 6am.