Irish hitchhiker responsible for Foo Fighters forming has been identified

16 August, 2024

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl

An Irish hitchhiker responsible for Foo Fighters forming has been identified via a video on social media.

Lorcan Dunne has stumbled on a video of Dave Grohl online talking about what inspired him to return to music following the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 and the subsequent ending of Nirvana.

Dunne’s cousin, Eoin Tighe, took to Twitter, now X, to explain that he believed Dunne to be the man Grohl spoke about in the interview – and the reason Grohl got back into the studio after the death of Cobain.

In the video, Grohl explains he had a “soul-searching” trip to The Ring of Kerry in Ireland. Grohl said he wanted to “disappear” and go to the “most remote place on earth” after he battled grief following the death of Cobain.

He explained: “I’ve been before. It’s so beautiful there. You really feel like you’re at the end of the Earth. I was driving around in my rental car on a country road and I saw this hitchhiker kid. And I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll pick him up’. And as I got closer to him, I saw that he had a Kurt Cobain t-shirt on.

“It was Kurt’s face looking back at me…in the middle of nowhere!”

In a video then shared by Eoin on social media, Dunne explained the story from his point of view.

He remembered: “We were down on the Beara Peninsula on a holiday and we hitched up to this place to go swimming. I was running and I saw a car there, so I thought I’d run up and hitch. When I was hitching, I looked into who was sitting in the passenger seat – but it was David Grohl.

“I didn’t recognise him firstly, but I saw this look of shock on the guy’s face… and I had a Nirvana t-shirt on with Kurt Cobain on it.

“It was black tie dye, the one with Kurt where he has the mascara on his face. I saw the look of shock and the next thing, the car just tore off, away. And I turned round like, ‘That was David Grohl lad!’ Nobody believed me!”

Lorcan explained that he had spotted the video of Grohl’s interview recently when it clicked.

He added: “I was like, ‘There you go, that was me!'”

Explaining the impact seeing Cobain’s face on the t-shirt had on him, Grohl added: “I realised like, ‘Oh. I can’t outrun this’. So I need to go home and fucking get back to work. And so I did.”

NME has reached out to representatives of Foo Fighters for comment.

Earlier this month, Dave Grohl covered Tenacious D‘s ‘Tribute’ at a Foo Fighters show in Denver.

During the performance, Grohl revealed he participated in the making of ‘Tribute’ saying, “I only played the drums on that song.”

Grohl also recently dedicated a performance of ‘Times Like These’ to Tom Morello at Open’er Festival, with Grohl walking up to the former Rage Against the Machine guitarist on side-stage to play up close and personal.

Recalling the moment in a post on Instagram, Morello shared the clip and wrote: “Wild time last night at @opener_festival in Poland rocking out hard with pals @maneskinofficial and Dave Grohl & @foofighters!”

Elsewhere, Grohl recently joined in with Charli XCX’s viral ‘Apple’ dance trend.

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