It’s safe to assume Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and drummer Dave Grohl were at least reasonably excited to visit Ireland for the first time while touring with their grunge band in 1991. After all, hitting the road is an exciting endeavor, no matter where you go. But getting to visit the lush, green hills of Ireland for the first time while you do it? Well, that’s even better.
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Still, no matter how eager they were to hop the Atlantic and visit the Emerald Isle, the Nirvana musicians likely had no way of anticipating the tremendous spiritual and psychological impact the country would have on them.
Nirvana Frontman Kurt Cobain Felt A Connection To Ireland
Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was born in Aberdeen, Washington, over 4,000 miles away from the country that would come to hold immense spiritual significance to the musician. Although Cobain knew his family heritage centered somewhere across the pond in the U.K., he didn’t know the specifics about his ancestry. In a 1993 interview with Blank on Blank, the frontman revealed he didn’t even know Cobain was an Irish surname until he began looking up and calling different Cobains in phone books while on tour (ah, the 1990s). When he couldn’t find a Cobain, he’d call a Coburn.
Cobain ended up on the phone with a woman in San Francisco who had traced the history of Cobain and its Americanized counterpart, Coburn, back to County Cork, Ireland, the southernmost county of the Emerald Isle. He said the connection between Cobain and Cork was “a weird coincidence because when we toured, we played in Cork, and the entire day, I walked around in a daze. I’d never felt more spiritual in my life. I was almost in tears the whole day. It was the weirdest thing.”
Indeed, it seems as though Cobain subconsciously knew he was visiting the land of his ancestors during those fateful Nirvana tours in the early 1990s. After his tragic death in 1994, Cobain’s spirit seemed to return to Ireland—this time, to speak to his former drummer and friend, Dave Grohl.
An Emerald Isle Experience Inspired Dave Grohl To Return To Music
Kurt Cobain’s heartbreaking suicide sent shockwaves through the global musical community. But even more intimately, his death wrecked the people closest to him, including his former bandmates. Following the tragedy, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl stepped away from music, unsure if he’d ever return to the passion he once shared with his late friend and colleague. Eventually, Grohl changed his mind and went on to form the Foo Fighters after an uncanny experience in Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, about two hours southwest of the country where Cobain’s ancestors once lived.
Grohl had escaped to the Irish countryside to recalibrate and figure out what he wanted to do with his life. Would he abandon playing altogether? Could he ever return to music after Cobain’s death? During this tumultuous period of self-reflection, Grohl was driving down a quiet country road in the rain when he noticed a hitchhiker walking on the shoulder. Grohl decided to pick him up, but he noticed something odd as he made his way toward the stranger.
“As I got closer and closer, I saw he had a Kurt Cobain t-shirt on,” Grohl recalled in a 2021 interview with Graham Norton. “I thought, ‘Even in the most remote area I could possibly find, I can’t outrun this thing.’ And I thought, ‘Okay, I am going to go home, and I’m going to start over.’ And I started the Foo Fighters.”
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc
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