Former Kerrang! editor and Q writer Paul Brannigan follows Dave Grohl from his punk beginnings, via the drummer's stool in Nirvana to leadership of the globe conquering Foo Fighters in new biography This Is A Call The Life And Times Of Dave Grohl (out 21 September). In this extract Brannigan, a friend of the drummer-turned-frontman, charts one of Grohl's key moments: Nirvana's headlining slot at the 1992 Reading Festival.
Reading 1992 was to be more than just a gig for Nirvana. Not only was it the biggest payday of their career - the trio commanding a $250,000 appearance fee as the final band on the final night of the festival's 20th anniversary staging - but the entire main stage bill on Sunday, 30 August had been built around them, a measure of just how much power and respect they commanded at the time. "It was just all our friends!" Grohl recollected. "Who's on first? The Melvins. Who else played that day? L7. Screaming Trees. Teenage Fanclub.Mudhoney. And [ABBA tribute band] Bjorn Again playing Teen Spirit at three in the afternoon? That was fucking awesome ..."
This was not just a gig. This was to be a coronation.
"But we were wracked with nerves," Grohl remembered. "Before the gig everyone was saying, Will they make it? Are they in rehab? Are they dead? The hype about us cancelling was so huge that even our friends in other bands were surprised when we turned up. It was a bad time for the band and then we had to step up in front of 40,000 people. And luckily something special happened. We expected it to be the biggest disaster of the year, but it turned out to be one of the greatest things in my life."
Just after nine o'clock that evening, as darkness descended on the royal county of Berkshire, Everett True, the journalist who had first propelled Nirvana into the spotlight, pushed a wheelchair carrying a hunched figure in a white hospital gown and blond wig into the middle of the broad festival stage.
"You're going to make it, man," said Krist Novoselic, stooping down for a handshake. "With the support of his friends and family, he's going to make it,"
the bassist told the crowd.
Clinging onto the microphone stand for support, Kurt Cobain pulled himself out of the wheelchair with exaggerated effort and stood before 40,000 expectant faces.
"Some say love it is a river..." he sang weakly, then toppled backwards onto the stage.
As cheers, laughter and whirring feedback rang around the site, Dave Grohl hammered out the opening fusillade of Breed and the most talked-about gig of Nirvana's career was underway. Twenty-four songs and 90 minutes later, as Cobain brought Territorial Pissings screeching to an end with a strangled, horrendously off-key rendition of The Star Spangled Banner - a playful nod to another iconic Seattle musician's [Jimi Hendrix] most legendary festival performance - Grohl exited to his left with a broad smile splitting his face.
"It was an incredible night," remembers photographer Charles Peterson, who had flown over from Seattle especially for the show. You had 40,000 people standing with steam rising from them and you had Kurt standing in front of them in his white smock with the light shining down upon him ... he looked like Jesus. Having seen Nirvana in clubs playing to next to no one just a few years previously you can't even imagine how surreal and special that felt. It felt like a victory."
"We pulled it off," Dave Grohl later noted humbly. "We proved we weren't useless pieces of shit."
Read more in This Is A Call The Life And Times Of Dave Grohl by Paul Brannigan now.
4:59 PM | 20/10/2011
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