An Irish hitchhiker who helped inspire Dave Grohl to start Foo Fighters in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death has shared the unreal encounter from his side - and it’s an epic yarn.
The story, which Dave Grohl has previously talked about in interviews, occurred back in the summer of 1994 when Grohl headed to rural Ireland to escape the media circus after the tragic death of Cobain.
Grohl has told his side of the story over the years, including writing about it in his book ‘The Storyteller,’ but we now have the Irish hitchhiker’s side too, who we now know is named Lorcan.
In a video that Lorcan’s cousin posted to X recently, he explains that him and his cousins were on holiday, looking to hitch a ride to a local swimming spot.
Spin Mag have cleverly woven together both sides of the story, which goes as follows:
Grohl explained in an interview, “I was driving around in my rental car on a country road and I saw this hitchhiker kid.”
In Lorcan’s video of him recounting the story, he explains, “I was running ahead and I saw a car there so I thought I’d run up and hitch.”
Grohl: “And I thought well maybe I’ll pick him up.”
Lorcan: “When I was hitching, I looked in to who was sitting in the passenger seat, but it was David Grohl… I saw this look of shock on his face.”
Grohl explained in his interview that he saw this ‘hitchhiker kid’ had a Kurt Cobain t-shirt on.
“I had a Nirvana t-shirt on with Kurt Cobain on it,” Lorcan explains.
Grohl explains that after noticing the hitchhiker, he saw “Kurt’s face looking back” at him “in the middle of nowhere.”
In that moment, Grohl realised: “I can’t outrun this, so I need to go home fking get back to work, and so I did.”
And that’s the yarn of how an Irish hitchhiker helped inspire Dave Grohl to start Foo Fighters. Pretty fkn epic, eh?
For those wondering, Dave never picked Lorcan up, and of course, everyone who Lorcan told the yarn to never believed him, until Grohl’s interview of him talking about the story came up.
Lorcan’s cousin recently shared the video to X, writing: “So my legend of a cousin Lorcan just realised he was kind of important to the creation of @foofighters @FooFightersUK. He saw a video by Dave Grohl talking about why he got back to work after a visit to Ireland. Lorcan was out hitchhiking wearing his nirvana top when Dave stopped.”
Suuuurely Grohl will see the video of Larcan, and maybe he’ll finally pick him up for a ride.
