The American rock band Nirvana was formed the year that I was born in 1987. Their lead singer, Kurt Cobain, completed suicide at the height of their stardom seven years later. Although I was very young when the band made a name for itself, their music flowed into my teens. They were the new middle America, proof that the American dream was failing for so many. With Cobain’s life and death, they became a symbol of everlasting, rebellious youth.
These men were by no means role models and definitely didn’t present themselves as such; they were lost, dispossessed, accidental prophets for a new generation. After Cobain died, Nirvana’s drummer David Grohl, who had joined the band in 1990, created ‘Foo Fighters’ as a one-man project and assembled a band to tour only after he had released the first album. He has enjoyed a tremendous amount of success since then, and even though Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, has often taken potshots at his image over the years, claiming that he’s not as nice as he seems, the shining way the public perceived him remained pretty much intact till it was uncovered that he had fathered a baby with someone other than his wife of over 20 years.
Now, honestly, I couldn’t care less about who Grohl chooses to sleep or stay up with, but I found it interesting how many people reacted negatively to the news – it was almost as if they had just discovered that the Pope had fathered a child. I am honestly so confused.
The fact is that Grohl is a serial cheater. He was unfaithful to his first wife and the high-profile girlfriend that came after, and both these cases were publicly documented. As far as I can tell from a lifetime of following his career, at no point has he claimed to be a bastion of purity, which is why I’m struggling to understand why the morality police are going at him so hard. Is it nice that he cheated on his wife? Definitely not. But I haven’t seen such outrage and bleats about betrayal from fans in a long time.
I hate to be the one to break it to the world, but rock stars are human beings just like us. Actually, they have it worse than us because they have a lifetime of temptation to combat, whereas the rest of us reach our sell-by date and become invisible much faster. Also, just because someone you see on TV or at an arena always seems lovely, it doesn’t mean they are. Everyone was very quick to dismiss Love’s claims about Grohl and call her crazy, but it looks like at least one of her past versions got the last laugh.
Ultimately, the latest Grohl indiscretion doesn’t just prove the age-old adage that you should never meet your heroes, but it reminds us that only statues belong on pedestals.