In a recent conversation with Metal Hammer, Filter’s frontman Richard Patrick revealed that he spoke to Dave Grohl to clarify that their song, ‘Hey Man, Nice Shot,’ was not about Kurt Cobain.
It was widely rumored when the track came out in 1995 that it was inspired by Cobain’s suicide. Recalling how this misunderstanding arose, Patrick said:
“There was a DJ in Seattle that said, ‘This song is about Kurt Cobain.’ But I have the copyrights to prove that it was written in ’91. He was still alive and kicking a**! It was never about Kurt Cobain, and DJs all over the country started insisting that it was.”
Then, the singer detailed his chat with Grohl and Krist Novoselic:
“The one thing that I made sure of was that [Nirvana’s] Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic knew I did not write it about Kurt. I saw Krist at a festival in Seattle and told him, and I saw Dave at an MTV afterparty.
Dave said to me that he had heard the song and liked it but that his friends had told him, ‘It’s about Kurt.’ Fortunately, he’d read a Rolling Stone article we were featured in, where we talked about R. Budd Dwyer. He told me, ‘I believe you.'”
In a 2012 interview with KLAQ 95.5, Patrick disclosed that he was inspired by the death of Budd Dwyer, who took his own life on live television during a press conference in 1987, while writing ‘Hey Man, Nice Shot’:
“I saw the raw footage of it. I’m from the suburbs; I don’t remember seeing a lot of things like that growing up. When you’re 22, and you see that, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ There was no Internet to watch death on … you can see anything on the Internet now.
Back then, we were watching it out of fascination of like, ‘Wow. We’re all gonna die. There was a morbid curiosity. I was watching it, and I was all, ‘Hey man, nice shot.'”
However, despite the controversy, the song became a success and a staple of Filter’s live performances. Elsewhere in the Metal Hammer interview, Patrick said that they play it as the last song of their set as they believe nothing else in their repertoire can top it.
You can listen to the song below.
