The Irish hitch-hiker who inspired Dave Grohl to ‘get back to work’ and start the Foo Fighters has come forward and shared his incredible story on Twitter/X - and it’s already going viral amongst Nirvana and Foos fans.
The hitch-hiker is named Lorcan and together with his cousin Eoin Tighe they’ve created a video that explains their side of the story, interpolating it with Grohl telling it from his side, as a (still young) rock musician reeling from his friend’s suicide in 1994. It’s quite something:
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 pic.twitter.com/nD7cUE0w8wAugust 15, 2024
In an interview on the Graham Norton Show in 2021, Grohl remembers how in mid-’94, in the midst of his grief he just wanted to escape: “I wasn’t sure what to do with my life. I couldn’t even listen to music. I didn’t want to turn on the radio. I put my instruments away. It hurt too much to listen to music, so I thought, ‘I’m going to go to one of my favourite places in the world,’ one of the most remote areas I could find. Just to go out and, like, soul search and find myself. So I went to the Ring of Kerry.”
It was whilst out driving in his rental car that Grohl encountered young Lorcan: “So I’m driving down this country road, am I’m, like, trying to figure out my life and trying to move on, and I see a hitchhiker, and he’s in a parka, and it’s kind of maybe raining a little and as I’m pulling up to him I think, ‘I’m gonna pick this kid up. He’s got a far way to go.’
“And I got closer and closer, and I saw he had a Kurt Cobain T-shirt on, and I thought, ‘Even in the most remote area I could possibly find, I can’t outrun this thing.’ And I thought, ‘OK. I’m gonna go home, and I’m gonna start over.’ And I started the Foo Fighters.”
As for Lorcan, he couldn’t believe his eyes – what would Dave Grohl be doing driving in West Ireland? It was only recently that his outlandish story was corroborated by the man himself.
Lorcan didn’t get the lift, but we all got the Foo Fighters: the happy ending to this heartwarming tale.
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