Dave Grohl Thought This Band Should’ve Been Bigger Than Nirvana

Nirvana was easily one of the biggest, most influential bands of the 1990s, but if you were to ask the grunge trio’s former drummer, Dave Grohl, a different band should’ve been even bigger. Despite all the cliches about 20/20 hindsight and “everything happening for a reason” one could throw at that sentiment, Grohl’s argument is more than just empty praise.

When the time came for Grohl to release the Foo Fighters’ sophomore album, The Colour and the Shape, he once again turned to the band he thought could’ve outshone Nirvana.

The Band That Could Have Been Bigger Than Nirvana

Dave Grohl might not have been Nirvana’s first drummer, but he was the one behind the kit when the grunge outfit went from Seattle heroes to international superstars. Their decade-defining sound cemented the trio’s place as one of the best-selling bands of all time, and the intrigue surrounding frontman Kurt Cobain’s death only adds to their immortality.

Grohl struggled to find his personal and musical footing following his friend and bandmate’s suicide, but eventually, he made his way back to the studio under the moniker Foo Fighters. (His return to music was thanks in no small part to a random hitchhiker wearing a Kurt Cobain t-shirt, which Grohl took as a sign that he couldn’t outrun his past or passions.)

In a 1997 interview with Montreal Mirror, Grohl was asked if he felt pressure to achieve the same commercial success as Nirvana with his new project, and his answer was surprising. Besides his creative intentions being musical and not commercial, Grohl said he put less stock in sellability after watching bands he believed could have been bigger than Nirvana fall by the wayside—bands like The Pixies.

Dave Grohl’s Deep Ties to The Pixies

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl told the Montreal Mirror, “We were all kind of blown away that [The Pixies] never made it big. Here are songs on their last album that really could have been radio songs. They could have been MTV’s new favorite band, but they weren’t. They were a huge influence on so many people because they were really a pop band, but they were f***ing weird.”

This “f***ing weird” pop sound was what Grohl was after when writing the Foo Fighters’ sophomore album, The Colour and the Shape, which features classic hits like “Everlong” and “My Hero.” So, he went to the source of The Pixies’ distinct sound: producer Gil Norton. Norton helped produce Pixies records like Doolittle, Bossanova, and Trompe le Monde, the last of which Grohl cited as a major musical influence.

“We went with Gil because, on all of his albums, he manages to get some sort of clarity, even in the dirtiest sound,” Grohl told the alt newspaper. “But the biggest reason we hired him was because of the arrangements on the last Pixies album, Trompe le Monde. They’re all so bizarre, and he let me in on how they did a lot of them. Some of them are mathematical, like the first half of a song would mirror the second half, stuff like that. And he just seemed like such a character.”

In the end, Grohl’s idea to use Norton’s production prowess paid off. After its 1997 release, The Colour and the Shape would go on to reach the top 10 on charts in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Greece, Ireland, New Zealand, and Sweden.

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