During a recent interview, Dave Grohl, the frontman of Foo Fighters and former drummer for Nirvana, disclosed that before settling on Pat Smear as their fourth member in 1993, the band explored other guitarists.
Grohl mentioned that potential candidates included Steve Turner from Mudhoney and Buzz Osborne of the Melvins, but they didn’t pursue them further as they didn’t want to disrupt the bands those guitarists were part of at the time. In contrast, Pat Smear’s situation was different; despite being a member of the Germs and the Adolescents, both bands were inactive at the time. Nirvana discovered Smear while he was working at the SST Superstore, a punk record shop.
“Kurt had been in Los Angeles and walked into the SST Superstore where Pat was working,” Grohl noted. “They instantly connected. During one of the first rehearsals, we were struggling to nail down [David Bowie’s] ‘The Man Who Sold The World,’ and the three of us just couldn’t get it right. Pat said, ‘Actually, it goes like this.’ I realized: ‘Now we have a musician in the band!’ Bringing Pat on board changed everything significantly. Kurt and Courtney were on one side of town while Krist and I were on the opposite side, and Pat played a crucial role in reconnecting us for a while.”
Smear became part of Nirvana for their Saturday Night Live performance and the In Utero album tour, and he was also key in their Unplugged In New York concert, where they performed the version of David Bowie’s ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ that he had taught them. Presently, Smear is a member of the Foo Fighters and recently joined the other surviving Nirvana members in a performance with Paul McCartney.
