Dave Grohl says he was “scared” to write about the death of his friend Kurt Cobain in his best-selling memoir The Storyteller.
Speaking on the PBS TV programme Amanpour And Company, Grohl admits that he deliberately chose to set aside writing the section of the book dealing with the 1994 death by suicide of his Nirvana colleague until the end of the writing process. Asked why, the Foo Fighters’ frontman confessed “beause I was scared to write it.”
“It's one thing to write about getting stitches when you're 12 years old or it's one thing to write about taking your kids to the daddy-daughter dance, it's another thing to write about something that you've barely spoken about with people close to you,” Grohl explained, “I mean, I revealed some things in that story that I've never told my closest friends. I was scared to write it.”
"First of all, I knew what people wanted me to write," he adds. "I think that people have a lot of unanswered questions, as do I. So I decided to write in a much broader emotional sense, the process of loss or grief and mourning, and how that's determined and how it differs from person to person. Yeah, it was a tough one to write."
Asked what made Kurt Cobain a special songwriter, Grohl replies, “I think that his simplicity, and the beautiful, direct language in his lyrics which I would consider poetry, his specific lens, his perspective on life: he was very open to writing about his own pain, which I think millions of people could relate to and connect with... it was just him.”
Watch the full interview with Grohl below:
Released on October 5, The Storyteller has proved to be a huge hit for Grohl, topping the bestselling book charts in both the UK and US.
