Dave Grohl has recalled the “strange” day after Kurt Cobain’s death.
Nirvana frontman Cobain took his own life in 1994 aged 27 at the height of his band’s fame, prompting shock and grief among fans of the pioneering grunge outfit.
Grohl, who was the group’s drummer, said it felt like everything had “turned upside down” and that he soon realised he had to tackle one day at a time.
The rocker joins TV presenter Dermot O’Leary on the latest episode of BBC Two’s Reel Stories for a look back at his career in both Nirvana and current band Foo Fighters.
He said: “I didn’t really have a plan. When everything’s sort of turned upside down, and shaken up like that, you just wake up every day thinking, ‘Who am I, where am I, what am I doing?’
“I remember the day after Kurt died, how strange it felt to wake up knowing he wasn’t with us anymore, and that I had another day. Like, OK, so what am I going to do with today?
“I believe it was then that I started to realise, oh OK, you have to do everything once again.
“Meaning like, I have to make a pot of coffee and this is my first pot of coffee since Kurt’s gone. I have to go upstairs and get dressed.
“This is the first thing I’ll wear since Kurt has been gone. It goes like that. I honestly don’t know what I did. It was months and months and months.”
Grohl suggested his work ethic came from his parents – his father James was a journalist and his mother Virginia a public school teacher in the US.
He said: “Being raised by a public school teacher, their pay is like, nothing. It’s a crime. So I would watch my mother just go from pay cheque, to pay cheque, to pay cheque, to pay cheque.
“Our heat would get turned off, the phone would get turned off, the electricity would get turned off.
“There were some nights when it was like, ‘What’s for dinner?’ And she’s like, ‘Um, we have two eggs… scrambled egg sandwiches’.
“So this work ethic is instilled in you, where you realise that in order to survive, you have to work.”
Reel Stories: Dave Grohl airs on Saturday March 27 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
