Photo: AFP
The three surviving members of Nirvana — Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and touring guitarist Pat Smear — have written and recorded new music together as a group, though they have no plans to release the material.
Grohl has previously alluded to the fact that he somewhat regularly gets together with Novoselic and Smear to play music just for fun.
In a recent conversation with Howard Stern, Grohl explains that whenever Novoselic is in town, the trio gets together. Oftentimes, one thing leads to another, and they jam.
"Krist Novoselic is a pilot, he flies his own plane… he lives up in the Pacific Northwest and whenever he comes down to Los Angeles, you know, we always love to see each other and we’ll have dinner," Grohl said. "Last time he was here I made dinner for us and we hung out. And Pat‘s always around and the three of us, you know, we like to be together. We like to see each other and if there are instruments around or a studio that’s available, we’ll just get together and kind of jam, you know?"
He continued, noting that the three don't "run through a big old Nirvana setlist, but we do like to fool around and sometimes as we’re fooling around, songs happen. And you know if we’re in a studio we’ll record them. So we’ve recorded some stuff that’s really cool. But we’ve never done anything with it… it’s more just like friends, jamming around, it doesn’t really seem like any sort of like big official reunion."
Grohl sticks to drums for the sessions, explaining that the three don't have a singer. After more than 30 years of recording and touring as a career, Grohl says it's freeing to play with a group just for fun, with no further ambition.
"There’s no pressure on us to do something that the world will have to hear it’s more really just for fun, and a lot of it’s really cool."
Grohl reiterated a sentiment he's expressed before about playing with Novoselic and Smear, that "it sounds like it did. It sounds like it used to. When we put the three of us in a room and it makes that noise, it still does."
Grohl, Smear and the rest of the Foo Fighters are beckoning music fans back to New York City this month, playing a full-capacity concert to a fully-vaccinated audience at Madison Square Garden on June 20.
It will be the first full-capacity gig at The Garden in more than 460 days. Tickets go on-sale June 11.