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Dave Grohl and Pharrell Williams — a pair of Virginia-bred musicians — talk about the early days of N.E.R.D. in this exclusive clip from Thursday’s episode of Grohl’s docuseries From Cradle to Stage.
Grohl first asks Williams, one half of the superstar production team the Neptunes, whether he ever dreamed of a career in music when he first started out.
“Hell no, we only did it because we thought it was fun,” Williams said. “It was like the only thing that was more fun than skateboarding at the time.”
Grohl also asks Williams if his band adopted the name N.E.R.D. from the onset. “No. At that point, we had really embarrassing names,” Williams said. Grohl pushes the Neptunes mastermind on the other monikers, but Williams steadfastly refuses to reveal them. “Really bad. So bad,” Williams admits.
On the second episode of From Cradle to Stage, premiering Thursday on Paramount+, Grohl and his mother Virginia journey to Williams’ Something in the Water music festival, with the Grohls meeting up with Pharrell and his mother Dr. Carolyn Williams. Both Virginia and Carolyn were public school teachers in Virginia, and both mothers detail their shared experience of raising musicians.
