Entertainment

Dave Grohl: I don’t talk to my teenage daughter about Nirvana

She recorded backing vocals for the forthcoming Foo Fighters album.
She recorded backing vocals for the forthcoming Foo Fighters album. She recorded backing vocals for the forthcoming Foo Fighters album.

Dave Grohl has said he does not talk to his teenage daughter Violet about his time in Nirvana.

But the US rocker said the 14-year-old “knows the history” and had connected emotionally with their music.

Grohl, 52, played drums in the pioneering grunge band from 1990 until 1994 when lead singer Kurt Cobain took his own life aged 27.

Brit Awards 2018 – Press Room – London
Brit Awards 2018 – Press Room – London Foo Fighters (Ian West/PA)

He went on to form Foo Fighters and has scored four number one albums including their most recent effort, 2017’s Concrete And Gold.

Violet, the eldest of his three daughters with his wife Jordyn Blum, features on the band’s new album, the disco-influenced Medicine At Midnight, as a backing singer on the track Making A Fire.

He told the PA news agency: “It’s funny. The two of us don’t talk about Nirvana. She will ask sometimes and she understands. She knows the history. But it’s not something we talk about.

“I am talking more about ordering her shoes online or what she wants in her lunchbox. Every once in a while it will come up.

“But she connected with the emotion or the aesthetic of Nirvana without ever really having talked about it. And I am proud of that.

Glastonbury Festival 2017 – Day 2
Glastonbury Festival 2017 – Day 2 Dave Grohl during the band’s headline set at Glastonbury (Yui Mok/PA)

“She’s a teenager man. I know it is 30 years later but those records still do the same thing when a teenager listens to it. There is something there. It’s real.”

Last year Violet sang vocals for the remaining members of Nirvana – Grohl, bassist Krist Novoselic and touring guitarist Pat Smear – on stage at a charity gala organised by the Art of Elysium group.

The band were also joined by singers Beck and St Vincent as they played the 1993 Nirvana track Heart-Shaped Box.

Grohl compared playing with his daughter to playing with Cobain.

He said: “I sat at the drum set pounding away the same way I did 30 years ago and her at the vocal mic.

“I used to pound the f*** out of my drums for Kurt. And that night I was pounding the f*** out of my drums for my daughter.

“That is your drummer’s job. You want the engine to run as loud and hot and fast as you possibly can.”

Foo Fighters 10th album, Medicine At Midnight, is out on Friday.