Nirvana drummer explains departure

Chad Channing has explained why he was sacked as Nirvana's drummer in 1990.

Channing played on the Kurt Cobain-fronted band's debut album Bleach but was soon replaced by Dave Grohl, who later went on to form Foo Fighters.

He told Clash Magazine: "I'm a big songwriter, always have been, and I was always hoping at some point I'd be involved in the song writing rather than just drum parts.

"At one point Kurt even brought that up saying, 'I'd like to have some help with songwriting'. Eventually I realised that wasn't going to happen and so in my mind I was thinking, 'Well what am I going to do here?'."

He added: "The reality is I didn't really give them much of a choice but to kick me out of the band. It was a situation that I should have quit out of before I was kicked out of.

"But it was always just a musical thing and I can't stress that enough. I never had any issues with the guys themselves, we always remained pretty good friends. I'm still friends with [bassist] Krist [Novoselic] even to this day."

A 20th anniversary deluxe edition of Bleach was released this week on SubPop.