For the first few years of their career, Nirvana went through quite a few drummers. Chad Channing stuck around for a while, though. He even ended up playing on the band’s debut studio album, Bleach.
The working relationship between him and guitarist/vocalist Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic soon waned. Ultimately, Channing was fired after “losing my inspiration” for the music.
In a resurfaced interview, Channing was asked about how his time with the band came to an end. This happened right before they recorded their second album, Nevermind. “I was looking forward to being able to write some stuff for the band,” Channing recalled, “and when Kurt said that he’d appreciate some input and help and all that kind of stuff. So that was one thing I was really looking forward to.”
“After a while,” however, he “kind of realized that really wasn’t going to happen.”
“When you don’t feel like you’re being all you can be, I guess in a band or whatever, it eventually kind of wears you down,” Channing explained. “And that’s what it was ultimately doing to me. It was just kind of dragging me down. It was like I started feeling more like a drum machine than anything else.”
“Somewhere along the line,” Chaning said, “I just kind of started losing my inspiration. And of course, when you do that, it’s going to show. No matter what you’re doing, even in the workplace or something, if someone’s not in it, you can tell. And so what do you do? Well, you’ve got to get rid of them.”
Channing remained friends with Cobain and Novoselic even after being fired from Nirvana
While deep down he probably didn’t really want to leave Nirvana, Channing understood the decision his bandmates had to make. “Chris and Kurt made the long drive up and came to came up to my place. That was a weird drive for them. I remember talking about it with Krist years down the road. He was like, ‘Yeah, that was like a really horrible drive. Me and Kurt were not looking forward to that at all.’”
Finally, Channing clarified that there was no bad blood between him and the band. “The thing was, we were always good friends,” he said. “So, I mean, to say it was through musical differences would be exact because it really was. That was a deal.”
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