Back at the turn of the ‘90s, Nirvana and Guns N’ Roses were seen as two opposing musical forces – and indeed, the dust-up between the two acts’ frontmen, Kurt Cobain and Axl Rose, at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards is the stuff of rock legend.
Over the years, however, tensions (not to mention silly genre distinctions) have faded. So much so that the former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters leader even guested, alongside Guns bassist Duff McKagan, on Watch This, a track on electric guitar player Slash’s 2010 self-titled solo album.
As Grohl recalled to Classic Rock in a new interview, “We were young and were fucked up and in this bizarre fantasy world of rock ’n’ roll. We were fucking kids. And the years went by and we all realized: ‘Come on, man, life is too short.’ ”
A few years later, Grohl had another collaboration with the Gunners, although this one was a bit more bizarre. When Rose broke his foot at a warm-up show for the band’s 2016 Not In This Lifetime… reunion tour, McKagan phoned Grohl to ask if they could borrow the throne he had used onstage after breaking his leg during a Foo Fighters show in Sweden in 2015.
“So Axl took it out with Guns N’ Roses, then he took it out with AC/DC, and then all of a sudden I became the guy you come to if you break a limb on tour, like Thrones R Us,” Grohl told Classic Rock.
Afterward, Rose dispatched Slash to procure a six-string thank-you for Grohl.
“He had Slash go pick me a guitar,” Grohl said. “And he picked me an early-’60s Gibson ES-335 Dot, which to this day is the nicest fucking guitar I have ever played in my life.
"It was an incredibly kind and classy gesture, and I was very appreciative.”
Slash recently launched the latest in his line of Gibson signature models, the "Victoria" Goldtop Les Paul – which, as it turns out, was named after the person who stole his old guitars.
