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Dave Grohl says he was told Kurt Cobain had died of an overdose just a month before the Nirvana frontman's suicide

Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana.
Dave Grohl, Kurt Cobain, and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana. Kevin Mazur Archive/WireImage/Getty Images

  • Dave Grohl got a call in March 1994 saying Kurt Cobain had died of an overdose — but he hadn't.
  • He said he felt he was "born again" when a second call informed him that Cobain was still alive.
  • Grohl wrote he often thinks about Cobain, who died just a month after the overdose.
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Dave Grohl said that he was told Kurt Cobain was dead of an overdose just a month before the Nirvana frontman died by suicide. 

In his recently-released memoir titled "The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music," Grohl opened up about receiving a call informing him of Cobain's apparent death in March 1994. He described feeling as though his "knees gave out" when he heard his bandmate was dead.

"I dropped the phone as I fell to my bedroom floor, covering my face with my hands as I began to cry," Grohl wrote, according to the New York Post

"He was gone," he continued. "The shy young man who had offered me an apple upon our first introduction at the Seattle airport was gone. My quiet, introverted roommate who I'd shared a tiny little apartment with in Olympia was gone."

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Grohl added that he "was overcome" with a "profound sadness" at the thought of Cobain dying. Grohl described the Nirvana lead singer as a "loving father who played with his beautiful baby daughter backstage every night before each show." 

However, Grohl wrote, he soon received a second phone call informing him that Cobain was still alive. 

"In the course of five minutes I had gone from the darkest day of my entire life to feeling born again. From that day forward, I built my walls higher," he said about how the experience changed him.

Nirvana in December 1993
Nirvana in December 1993. Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Tragically, only a month later, Cobain was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in April 1994. Except this time, Grohl didn't receive a second phone call. 

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"This time it was for real. He was gone," Grohl wrote in the memoir, per the Post. "There was no second phone call to right the wrong. To turn the tragedy around. It was final."

He added: "It was stuck somewhere deep within me, blocked by the trauma from a month before when I had been left in a state of conflicted emotional confusion."

It has been 27 years since Cobain's death, but the Foo Fighters lead singer and guitarist said that he thinks about Cobain all the time. 

Grohl wrote: "It's not often that I play the songs that we played together, but when I sit on that stool, I can still picture him in front of me, wrestling with his guitar as he screamed his lungs raw into the microphone."

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