Dave Grohl praises Post Malone and Travis Barker’s Nirvana covers set

Playing the back catalogue of one of the best-loved bands of the last 30 years is a daunting task, but one that Post Malone undertook to serious acclaim when he enlisted the help of Travis Barker, bassist Brian Lee and guitarist Nick Mack to power through a charity live stream of Nirvana classics last month.

During the stream, Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic was full of enthusiasm and compliments for the band, and now Dave Grohl has showered the band with praise: in particular Travis Barker's drumming.  

In an interview with LA's Alt 98.7, the Nirvana drummer revealed that he almost didn't watch at all.

"It was so weird, because I was writing. I started this Instagram page called Dave's True Stories because I thought, 'Well, I just wrote a whole record. I don't want to write music. And I don't really know what else to do, so I'll just write all these stories.'

And then I started getting hit with texts, people texting me like, 'Yo, are you watching this Post thing?' And I'm like, 'No, I'm writing right now.' They're like, 'It's pretty good.' I'm like, 'Really?'. "So I keep on writing. Another text comes in. 'Dude, are you watching this Post Malone thing?' So finally, I tuned in."

Of course, Grohl's drumming style in Nirvana was notoriously and intentionally simplistic, but that doesn't mean that recreating it is easy. Travis Barker is no slouch behind the kit, but stuck faithfully to Chad Channing and Dave Grohl's parts. Grohl went on to comment on Travis' drumming on the stream. 

"First of all, watching Travis play the drums to those Nirvana songs, I was honoured. I thought that was super-cool. More than the sound of it and more than the chords and whatever, it just sort of felt good.

"To me, it didn't feel weird. They were killing it. So I watched a bunch of it. I was like, 'That was really cool.' I don't get to see other people do Nirvana songs often, and he seemed perfectly comfortable with it, and it sounded great. Even the die-hard Nirvana people that I know, they were like, 'Dude, he's kind of killing it right now.'"

Viewers were able to donate during and after the live stream, with proceeds going to the United Nations Foundation Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organisation.