Kurt Cobain Listened to This Foo Fighters Track Before His Death and Loved It

Kurt Cobain was the main songwriter in Nirvana, but apart from being an incredible musician himself, he always encouraged his bandmates to write and share their creations. This was especially true with Dave Grohl. The drummer, at the time, was writing in private, but never brought his songs to the band.

One day, after the release of Nirvana's Nevermind, Grohl mustered the courage to show the singer one of his songs. To his amazement, Cobain loved it, and while Grohl still wasn't ready to share it with the world at the time, years later, after Kurt Cobain died, he finally released it on the first Foo Fighters album.

Dave Grohl Showed This Foo Fighters' Song to Kurt Cobain

The Foo Fighters are widely known as Dave Grohl's triumphant second act. Grohl's rise from the ashes of Nirvana was nothing short of miraculous, but few people know just how influential Kurt Cobain was in the formation of the band, without knowing. When Dave Grohl was in Nirvana, he was writing his own songs in private, but he never dared to bring them up for the band to play. When Howard Stern asked him about it, he was honest and said he didn't feel his songs were that good yet, especially compared to Kurt Cobain's songwriting. He likened it to how George Harrison felt about bringing his songs to The Beatles. No matter how good his songs were, he still had to compete with Lennon and McCartney. He added that, while in Nirvana, he felt "perfectly happy" playing Cobain's songs, and felt no need to push for his own songs to be included.

However, despite not wanting Nirvana to play his songs, he was still perfecting his craft, and in December 1991, after being in the band for over a year and feeling more comfortable in his place in the band, he decided to show Cobain a song he was quite proud of. The song was "Alone + Easy Target," and when he hesitatingly showed the singer the demo, he received a surprisingly effusive reaction.

"I'd told him I was recording, and he said, 'Oh, I wanna hear it, bring it by...' He was sitting in the bathtub with a Walkman on, listening to the song, and when the tape ended, he took the headphones off and kissed me and said, 'Oh, finally, now I don't have to be the only songwriter in the band!'"

While he was happy about the positive response, Grohl immediately discouraged the idea of including his own songs in the band, saying he preferred they keep doing Cobain's songs only. After Cobain died, Pat Smear revealed to Grohl that the singer also loved the Foo Fighters song "Exhausted," but he never told the drummer that because he had wanted to make changes to it to fit Nirvana's style and didn't want to offend him. Grohl lamented not having known about that. "I wish he had because I would have said, 'Absolutely.' To have that beautiful voice over one of my songs would have been amazing."

Kurt Cobain's Influence on The Foo Fighters

Both "Alone + Easy Target" and "Exhausted" were included on the first Foo Fighters album, which wasn't technically a band yet. While Dave Grohl titled it "Foo Fighters," he recorded it all by himself, playing all the instruments and writing all the lyrics. But Cobain's influence on the band extends way beyond his glowing reviews of the first two songs. Even long after he was gone, Cobain kept influencing Grohl's songwriting.

In 2011, the Foo Fighters were recording one of their most successful albums, Wasting Light. It was the first one to have Pat Smear, Grohl's former Nirvana bandmate, back as a full-time band member, and the whole experience had Grohl reflecting on their journey. For that album, he wrote the song "Walk," a moving track that talks about living life to the fullest. When he wrote it, Grohl was thinking about the grief of the days following Cobain's suicide.

“It kind of comes from the day after Kurt died. Waking up that morning and realizing, ‘Oh, s**t, he’s not here anymore. I am. Like, I get to wake up and he doesn’t. I’m making a cup of coffee. And he can’t. I’m gonna turn on the radio. And he won’t.’ That was a big revelation to me."

Going back to that first album, Dave Grohl said that, when he was recording it, he had "deliberately written nonsensical lyrics" so people wouldn't relate every song to Kurt Cobain. But even then, he was thinking about him and the people around him. The Foo Fighters' debut album includes a song that could be considered a diss track about Cobain's wife, Hole singer Courtney Love. After Cobain's death, the two of them had a bitter feud that lasted decades, and he was calling her out for the difficulties that had followed Nirvana's collapse.

From encouraging Dave Grohl's songwriting skills to inspiring him even from the afterlife, Kurt Cobain's influence can still be felt in Foo Fighters' music, and his incredible contributions to music and to rock 'n' roll as a movement will never be forgotten.