"It's kind of surreal": Athlone man's encounter with Dave Grohl goes viral

The story of an Athlone man's teenage encounter with ex-Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, which is believed to have inspired Grohl's decision to form his band Foo Fighters, has gone viral in recent days.

On several occasions over the years, the American rock star told a story of travelling to Ireland, as an escape, in the months after the suicide of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in April 1994.

Grohl said he was driving in the Ring of Kerry at that time when he slowed down to pick up a young hitchhiker. He was startled to see, in such a remote place, that the teenager was wearing a t-shirt with Kurt Cobain's face on it.

It appears that the teenager in question was Athlone native Lorcan Dunne, a now 45-year-old stone carver who still lives locally.

In his book, The Storyteller, Grohl said seeing the Kurt Cobain t-shirt in Ireland at that moment prompted him to have a panic attack, and he sped away without picking up the hitchhiker.

"There was Kurt's face staring back at me, almost as a reminder that no matter how far I ran, I could never escape the past," he wrote in his book. "This was the moment that changed everything."

Grohl soon returned to the US and vowed to "go back to work," starting a new chapter in his career by forming the hugely successful Foo Fighters.

The identity of the hitchhiker only came to light in recent days, after Lorcan Dunne verified his own memory of the incident with a cousin of his, Ciaran, at a family gathering in Cork.

A video of Lorcan outlining his memory of the encounter has been viewed more than two million times on X (formerly Twitter), and the story has been picked up by media outlets including the NME and Rolling Stone magazine.

On Monday night, Lorcan said he would "love to hear from Dave Grohl" about the incident, "just to get his side of things, and to confirm it, really."

His memory of the incident differs in some respects from the version told by Grohl. Lorcan was hitchhiking at the time on Cork's Beara Peninsula, not the Ring of Kerry, and he remembers Grohl being a passenger, rather than the driver, in the car.

But he does remember the shocked look on Grohl's face, and the car then speeding away.

"I turned around to (cousin) Ciaran and said, 'that was David Grohl!' And nobody believed me!" he said.

The encounter happened in "late July or early August" of 1994. Lorcan's memory of it was revived when he saw a 2021 video of Grohl talking about it, and he then confirmed his own recollection with his cousin, Ciaran, this month.

"Since then I've had a friend who remembers me saying it after I came back from that holiday. So I do have two people verifying it! It is kind of surreal. The whole thing is mad," he said.

Since Lorcan's involvement in the story emerged, he has received numerous calls about it from media outlets, including radio stations in Ireland and the USA.

But, as of Monday night, he had only spoken about it to the Westmeath Independent.

"To be honest, I'm not gone on the whole limelight thing. I really don't want anything at all out of this. I'd love to know (for sure) if it was me, but it seems too much of a coincidence not to be," he said.

"I was hoping maybe I would hear from (Dave Grohl). I'd prefer if he confirmed it. I think he's a phenomenal drummer. He has given so much to music over the years. And if he doesn't want to respond to this, that's fine too."

"But I don't want to repeat myself and talk over and over about it."

"I have a lot of work to do as well. I'm a stone carver and I have two gargoyles to do, would you believe. I'm carving the second one now, and I need to have it done by this Friday, so I'm really busy, and on a time constraint with that."

Lorcan, who is married to Fiona and has a son and a daughter, said he wasn't sure if he still has the now-famous Kurt Cobain t-shirt at the centre of the story.

"I don't remember throwing it out. There's one last place I'm going to look (for it). If I find it, I'll probably just give it to my son," he said.