Dave Grohl Plays His First Show With Nirvana

On Oct. 11, 1990, a dark-haired, rather dishevled-looking young man sat behind a drum kit that in turn sat behind a guitarist and a bassist. It was 21-year-old Dave Grohl, performing for the first time ever with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic as Nirvana.

Not that Grohl was a rookie. By that point, he was already something of a veteran drummer of the Washington D.C. punk rock scene having performed and toured extensively with the band Scream, which he joined at 17 years old.

This, actually, is how he came to meet Cobain and Novoselic. A mutual friend, Melvins guitarist Buzz Osborne, brought them to see Scream when their tour came to the West Coast in 1990, and pretty much instantly they recognized that Grohl had the power and panache that they were seeking for their own band.

“He was a hard hitter,” Novoselic told Michael Azerrad for the Nirvana biography Come As You Are. “He was really dynamic. He was so bright, so hot, so vital. He rocked.”

What Did Dave Grohl Think of Nirvana?

Grohl was not as quickly impressed.

“I remember being in the same room with them and thinking, ‘What? That’s Nirvana? Are you kidding?'” he recalled to Q in 2010 (via fooarchive.com). “Because on their [Bleach] record cover they looked like psycho lumberjacks, but I was like, ‘What, that little dude [Cobain], that big motherfucker [Novoselic]? You’re kidding me.’ I laughed, I was like, ‘No way.'”

Still, this led to Grohl packing up his drums and heading for Seattle, where he arrived in September of 1990. A few days later he participated in a session with Nirvana in Seattle, which only solidified Cobain and Novoselic’s feelings. There was no formal invitation – Grohl essentially just kept playing with them and Cobain started telling people that Nirvana had a new drummer.

The new addition was finally shown to the public on Oct. 11, 1990 at the North Shore Surf Club in Olympia, Washington, where Grohl played a 20-song set with Nirvana that would become the first of many, many shows together. The 300-capacity venue was sold out, and despite the power going out not once but three times at the beginning of the show, the group had no problem blowing the audience away.

Someone presciently had the sense to video tape at least part of this performance, which you can view below, along with the show’s set list.

Decades later, Grohl would recall that in those early moments, he too had recognized the trio’s seemingly innate connection.

“When we sat down to play for the first time in this little damp, dank, disgusting rehearsal space, that I think belonged to either Mudhoney or Tad, we locked in perfectly immediately,” he said to Uncut in 2021. “Within one minute we knew that this was the right thing to do. It doesn’t happen often, there are only a few times in life when things lock in perfectly.”

Watch Dave Grohl Perform Live With Nirvana for the First Time

Nirvana, Oct. 11, 1990, North Shore Surf Club, Olympia, Washington, Set List:
1. “Son of a Gun” (The Vaselines cover)
2. “Molly’s Lips” (The Vaselines cover) (The power went out, so the band stopped the song)
3. “D-7” (Wipers cover) (The power went out again, so the band stopped the song)
4. “Blew” (The power went out yet again, but the band finished the song when the power came back on)
5. “Negative Creep”
6. “Been a Son”
7. “Stain”
8. “Floyd the Barber”
9. “About a Girl”
10. “Spank Thru”
11. “School”
12. “Stay Away”
13. “Breed”
14. “Big Cheese”
15. “In Bloom”
16. “Dive”