Foo Fighters drummer Dave Grohl is refusing to tell his children how Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain died as they are too young to cope with the tragedy.

The rocker has two daughters - Violet, seven, and Harper, four - who know he was in a band with Cobain, but he is determined to shield them from the details of his former bandmate's grisly death.

He tells Rolling Stone magazine, "They know I was in Nirvana. They know Kurt was killed. I haven't told them that he killed himself. They're four and seven years old. So when they listen to (Nirvana's classic album) In Utero, they'll have that fresh perspective - the original intention of the album, as a first-time listener... Someday they will learn what happened. And it'll change that. It did for me."

Cobain died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Seattle, Washington in 1994.