Dave Grohl says he avoids listening to Nirvana, calls songs too ‘personal’

Dave Grohl has a difficult time listening to the songs he recorded with Nirvana nearly 25 years after lead singer Kurt Cobain committed suicide, he said in an interview published Wednesday.

The former Nirvana drummer-turned-Foo Fighters frontman discussed the lingering effects of Cobain’s death in an interview conducted with the British version of GQ magazine for its latest cover story.

“For years I couldn’t even listen to any music, let alone a Nirvana song,” said Mr. Grohl, 49. “When Kurt died, every time the radio came on, it broke my heart.”

Twenty-four years after Cobain’s passing, listening to Nirvana remains “almost impossible” for Mr. Grohl, GQ reported.

“I don’t put Nirvana records on, no,” he said. “Although they are always on somewhere. I get in the car, they’re on. I go into a shop, they’re on. For me, it’s so personal.

“I remember everything about those records; I remember the shorts I was wearing when we recorded them or that it snowed that day,” the musician continued. “Still, I go back and find new meanings to Kurt’s lyrics. Not to seem revisionist, but there are times when it hits me. You go, ’Wow, I didn’t realize he was feeling that way at the time.’ “

Cobain was found dead in his Seattle residence in April 1994 at the age of 27 as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

Mr. Grohl, a former Virginia resident who joined Nirvana in 1990, first appeared on the group’s second studio album, 1991’s groundbreaking “Nevermind.” He formed Foo Fighters following Cobain’s death and subsequently won a dozen Grammy Awards for that group’s recordings, among other accolades.

Nirvana bassist Krist Noveselic, meanwhile, discussed coping with the grunge icon’s passing in an interview of his own earlier this month with NME.

“I took a long time,” Mr. Noveselic, 53, said of coping with Cobain’s death. “It was so traumatic. I was depressed from it. It had terrible effects. I had other things in my life at that point that held me back, too. But in the end, time healed it and you end up dealing with it.

“Then, eventually, you come to terms with things … but I don’t know, really,” he said. “You just have to try to be positive.”