Dave Grohl Shares How He Ended Up in Seattle

In a candid interview for his film How I Ended Up in Seattle for the SundanceTV series Dear Seattle musician Dave Grohl fondly remembers how he ended up in Seattle, Washington after getting stranded in Los Angeles after a gig with another band. When a friend from The Melvins told him that Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic were very interested in having him join Nirvana as a drummer, he talked to his mother and decided to go. This decision would change his life forever.

I’m happy that I’ve got to experience those few years in Seattle where the city just exploded. The experiences that I had at that age, which is a really impressionable age shaped so much about who the person that I am now. I was living with my buddy Barrett in this room in the back of the house knowing that I could have bought every house on the street but I didn’t want it to change.

Grohl has moved elsewhere since that time, but he still visits, acknowledging how the city changed his life in both good and in painful ways.

When I go back to Seattle I always rent a car and drive around to these places that I spent time and I find myself driving slower when I get to the places that broke my heart because I still want it. I want that to just stay with me and all of those lessons that were learned at that time and all the things that I gained and all the things that I lost.