Longtime GWAR member Michael Bishop has confirmed that Dave Grohl did indeed come close to joining the long-running costumed metal outfit in their early days.
In a piece for Rolling Stone published Tuesday, the Foo Fighters frontman revealed that he was approached by GWAR to become the band's new drummer back when he was a teenager making a name for himself playing in Washington, D.C. punk bands. While Grohl went as far as coming up with ideas for his own GWAR costume, he ultimately decided against joining, citing the group's notoriously vulgar live performances.
After the piece ran, Rolling Stone got in contact with Bishop, who backed up Grohl's account.
"We had all seen Dave play with his bands Dain Bramage and later on in Scream," recalls Bishop, who joined GWAR in 1987 as a bassist and is currently the band's lead vocalist. "He was already one of the greatest, hardest-hitting drummers I had ever seen. He still is."
"I was stoked, because I played bass at the time, and I would have loved to jam with [Grohl]," Bishop adds. "Just think, he could have been working his a** off playing drums in a rubber monster suit all these years. Boy, did he make the wrong choice."
Grohl, of course, went on to join Nirvana and then form Foo Fighters, so "wrong choice" is really in the eye of the beholder here.
Along with Bishop's statement, his GWAR alter-ego Blöthar the Berserker has also shared his much less kind, much more fictional recollection of what happened with Grohl.
"We hired [Grohl] and then called him back immediately and fired him," Blötharsays. "He was in the band for around seven and a half minutes. He was holding us back."
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