Like Chad Channing, Dan Peters and Dale Crover, Dave Foster was drummer in legendary grunge band Nirvana for a while. In fact, Dave Foster was their third drummer. He was fired after playing only a couple of performances with the band, mostly because of his inability to attend rehearsal sessions regularly. Foster lived hours away from Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic back in Aberdeen, Washington, which required the men to pick Foster up and bring him to the band's rehearsal space in Tacoma. According to Cobain's own account, this made band practices too much of a hassle.



According to Charles R. Cross in his 2001 Cobain biography Heavier Than Heaven, Cobain's final straw with Foster came after Foster was arrested for assaulting the son of the mayor of Cosmopolis, Washington, which landed him in jail for two weeks, and caused him to have his driver's license revoked, and being fined thousands of dollars in the victim's medical expenses.



Neither Cobain nor Novoselic informed Foster directly of his termination. According to Cross, Foster realized he was out of the band when he saw an advertisement for an upcoming Butthole Surfers show featuring Nirvana as the opening act that he hadn't been told about.



Ironically, a lengthy termination note addressed to Foster was included, unsent, in Kurt Cobain's published Journals, which while praising Foster's drumming, also bemoans the difference in cultural background between Foster and Cobain, who both were Aberdeen natives.