Dave Grohl has revealed that the surviving members of Nirvana - himself, bassist Krist Novoselic and guitarist, Pat Smear - have recorded some “really cool” new music, but before you get too excited, there are no plans for the instrumental ideas to ever see the light of day.
The three surviving musicians from Nirvana's final line-up have reunited a number of times on stage, with a cast of guest vocalists ranging from Lorde, St Vincent and Kim Gordon to Beck, Deer Tick's John Macauley and even Grohl's daughter, Violet Grohl.
During an interview with Howard Stern announcing Foo Fighters’ return to arenas at Madison Square Garden on June 20, the former Nirvana drummer spoke about how the trio’s private jam sessions have led to the writing and recording of new ideas, with no plan or expectation of releasing the material.
“Krist Novoselic is a pilot, he flies his own plane… he lives up in the Pacific Northwest and whenever he comes down to Los Angeles, you know, we always love to see each other and we’ll have dinner,’ Grohl said. ‘Last time he was here I made dinner for us and we hung out. Pat‘s always around and the three of us, you know we like to just, we like to be together. We like to see each other and if there are instruments around or a studio that’s available, we’ll just get together and kind of jam, you know?
“We don’t, like, run through a big old Nirvana setlist but we do like to fool around and sometimes as we’re fooling around, songs happen. And you know if we’re in a studio we’ll record them. So we’ve recorded some stuff that’s really cool. But we’ve never done anything with it… it’s more just like friends, jamming around, it doesn’t really seem like any sort of like big official reunion.”
When asked if he takes vocal duties on the jams, Grohl responded, “Well, no I’m just playing the drums. We don’t have a singer. So, it’s like, we kind of record these instrumentals and just mess around. It’s very casual. There’s no pressure on us to do something that the world will have to hear.
It’s more really just for fun, and a lot of it’s really cool. It reminds you that, that when the three of us get together in a room and start playing, it sounds like it did. It sounds like it used to. When we put the three of us in a room and it makes that noise, it still does.”
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