Dave Grohl was ‘terrified’ to play Reading festival

Dave Grohl was “terrified” before making his debut at the Reading Festival with Nirvana.
The group played the fabled British music event in 1991, and the gig has passed into festival folklore.
However, Dave admits he was incredibly nervous before the gig – as fellow grunge icon Dan Peters of Mudhoney told him there would be a crowd of up to 35,000 people – bigger than any he and bandmates Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic had ever played to.
“I just couldn’t imagine 35,000 people getting together to see bands like Mudhoney or Nirvana,” Dave tells British music website NME. “It just didn’t happen in America.
“Then when I saw that it was on our itinerary maybe a year later, I was f**king terrified. I would wake up every morning in this panic attack in a fit of anxiety, knowing that there was this festival that I was going to have to play in front of 35,000 people – which I had never done. When we got there that day, I realised how big it really was.”
Dave is headlining this year’s (19) event with his band the Foo Fighters on Sunday (25Aug19), the seventh time they have played Reading.