The Dave Grohl riff Kurt Cobain thought was terrible

Aug 01, 2023

There was no competing with any other songwriter in Nirvana compared to Kurt Cobain. Though he may have had a limited vocabulary for guitar chords and proper music theory, the soulful energy channelled through classics like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘In Bloom’ struck a nerve with kids that was impossible to put into words. Although Cobain was open to collaboration, he did admit when he thought his fellow bandmates didn’t write something up to par.

Before even working with Nirvana, Dave Grohl was already working on his material for fun. Stuck in the studio with his friend Barrett Jones, Grohl would use the tape that was left at the end of various sessions to test out his original compositions. Though the songs may have worked well for Grohl at the time, he was quick to dismiss anything he wrote for Nirvana.

When talking about whether he would ever consider throwing any of his songs into Nirvana jam sessions, Grohl didn’t give it a second thought, telling Lars Ulrich, “Our songwriter was pretty kickass. And what’s the last thing that a drummer says before getting kicked out of the band? ‘Hey guys, I have a song that I think we should play’”.

While Grohl got his original compositions out on his demo side project Pocketwatch under the pseudonym Late!, Cobain was still open to having a collaborative effort going into the band’s next album In Utero. Aside from ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Scentless Apprentice’ would be one of the only songs that listed every member of the Seattle trio as a composer.

Birthing out of a jam they were having, Grohl was responsible for coming up with the guitar riff, twisting its way through the verses leading up to Cobain’s painful scream. According to Cobain, though, he was more than a little resistant to even take on Grohl’s riff, recalling in Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana, “Dave’s riff was such a cliché grunge Tad riff that I was reluctant to even jam on it. But I decided to write a song with that just to make him feel better, to tell you the truth, and it turned out really cool”.

While Grohl might be listed in the credits as one of the central figures on the song, Cobain thought that his own contributions gave the song its true power, explaining, “I think most of the reason that song sounds good is because of the singing style and the guitar parts I do over the top of the basic rhythm. But hell, that was great”.

Taking inspiration from the book Perfume, Cobain put together one of the most despondent-sounding Nirvana tunes. Considering the amount of pressure on his shoulders thanks to the group’s sudden rush of fame, Cobain’s screams of ‘GO AWAY’ in the chorus are some of the most unsettling moments in 1990s rock.

For all the slams thrown Grohl’s way, it wasn’t a total loss for him during the In Utero. Unearthing a song from his Pocketwatch days, ‘Marigold’ would be the only song in Nirvana’s song sung by Grohl, included on the B-side to ‘Heart Shaped Box’ upon release. Grohl had even said that the beginnings of the first Foo Fighters album consisted of songs that could have been morphed into Nirvana songs later down the line. Cobain may have ruled the group with an iron fist, but Grohl was slowly starting to assert himself as a talented songwriter in his own right.