Did Dave Grohl Just Debunk a Huge Myth About Kurt Cobain?

Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl might have just debunked a huge myth about Kurt Cobain.

The rocker discussed quite a bit of his career with Nirvana during a recent appearance on Apple Music 1's The Zane Lowe Show.

One of the longest-standing assumptions about Cobain is that he never wanted to be a famous rock star and that Nirvana were totally anti-establishment. This was primarily due to Cobain's apparent discomfort with being in the spotlight and his rebellious attitude in interviews and other appearances.

What Did Dave Grohl Say About Kurt Cobain's Desire to Be Famous?

At one point in the interview, Lowe asked Grohl if Cobain was "built for" a lot of the accolades and anniversary celebrations that successful rock bands tend to participate in.

"That is a really good question... [I] always go back to when we flew to New York to talk to record companies to sign a deal before Nevermind came out," Grohl said.

"We sat down in this high rise, major label office with this super powerful executive who was sitting behind a giant oak desk and listening to the song on stun volume. Me, Krist [Novoselic] and Kurt [were] on the other side of the desk in these low chairs, it looked like we were being punished at school or something."

According to Grohl, when the executive asked the trio what they wanted out of a record deal, Cobain replied, "We want to be the biggest band in the world."

Grohl thinks they all laughed at Cobain's remark — but he still isn't sure to this day whether the singer was kidding or being serious.

"To this day I think about it," he admitted.

Dave Grohl Might Have Just Debunked a Huge Myth About Kurt Cobain

Did Cobain Actually Say He Never Wanted to Be Famous?

Cobain responded to the question differently in various interviews during the '90s. While he was often happy with the success of his music, he did express dismay for the lifestyle that comes with being a well-known musician.

In one particular 1993 interview, he agreed that he would have preferred to have stayed a "cult band" that sold less records.

"Cult bands seem to have a very steady lifestyle. They don't have the hassles of being a celebrity and they're almost guaranteed to sell the same amount of records and play to the same people every time," the vocalist said.

"I kinda envy bands like the Pixies or Iggy Pop, people who have had pretty much the same fans or people who can appreciate the music on that level, because they don't have to deal with all the other bullshit that gets in the way."

Nirvana's debut album Bleach, which came out before Grohl joined on drums, was released through the Seattle-based independent label Sub Pop Records and initially sold around 40,000 copies.

The band signed a deal with DGC Records, a subsidiary of Geffen, in April of 1991. After the massive success of Nevermind, Geffen signed a deal with Sub Pop to reissue Bleach and its sales boosted to over 1.7 million copies in the U.S., making it Sub Pop's best-selling album of all time.

Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson's Dangerous from No. 1 in January of 1992. It didn't take long until Nirvana actually were the biggest band in the world and they took Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and the rest of their grunge-adjacent contemporaries to the top with them.

"They worked toward becoming rock stars, regardless of what they said," Melvins' Buzz Osborne told Loudwire in a documentary on the Seattle grunge scene. "That's what they wanted to do. They plugged themselves into the same venues, managers, record labels as anyone else — as Motley Crue."

See how we ranked the top grunge albums of all time in the gallery below.