Dave Grohl recalls mishap in Nirvana’s first ‘SNL’ performance

Dave Grohl‘s nerves nearly led to a “Titanic-level disaster” the first time Nirvana played Saturday Night Live.

“I was absolutely f—ing terrified,” the legendary grunge band’s drummer admitted in the new documentary Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music. “The room gets dead silent. Your heart is racing and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna faint. I’m gonna puke on live television. I’m gonna die.’”

While Grohl made it through the live performance of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” alongside bandmates Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic on the Jan. 11, 1992 episode, his equipment did not.

“Typically what happens if I get nervous, I beat the s— out of the drums, twice as hard,” the Foo Fighters frontman shared. “I was hitting the drums 10 times harder than I’ve ever hit them before in my life. By the first verse, I had snapped my snare stick in half. Which is not good.”

He emphasized, “Oh, and this is only like 20 seconds into the song.”

Luckily Grohl’s mishap didn’t end in Nirvana offering all apologies for a ruined set.

“There was one break right before the first drum roll, I think, where I grabbed another stick really quick and busted into it. I mean, it was so close to being like Titanic-level disaster,” Grohl described.

The rockers also played “Territorial Pissings,” another song from their seminal album Nevermind, on the season 17 episode hosted by Rob Morrow.

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In the documentary, SNL creator Lorne Michaels explained how the band made his radar. “David Geffen called me about Nirvana because they were on his label, and he said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening, but you know, last week they sold 60,000 records, and this week they sold 140,000, so something is happening,’” Michaels recalled.

Adam Sandler, in his second season on the cast at the time, remembered the frenzy around his fellow Gen Xers. “People were talking about it, getting more calls than you ever got before from friends in my hometown, just like, ‘What’s he like? What’s Kurt like?’”

Nirvana returned for a second stint as musical guest on Sept. 25, 1993, just seven months before Cobain’s death at age 27. And despite his early bout of nerves, Grohl went on to become the most frequent SNL musical guest in the show’s history, performing with Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures, as an impromptu drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and other special appearances. The Grammy winner and two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee has also popped up in sketches over the years to show off his comedy chops, like the fan-favorite “Punk Band Reunion at the Wedding.”

Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music, co-directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Oz Rodríguez, is now streaming on Peacock.