Foo Fighters‘ live gigs are legendary. Not only do you get your bang for your buck when it comes to gig length (the band regularly near 3-hour shows), but with an arsenal of hits ready to go at any time and Grohl’s infectious stage persona – the band are an unmissable prospect.
As they announce a set of gigantic UK stadium shows for next summer – Grohl and guitarist Pat Smear give us the lowdown on the band’s most iconic shows thus far.
The Chaotic One
Reading Festival – August 1995
Dave Grohl: “We’d only played one other show in the UK before then to maybe 400 people and then that year we were headlining the side stage at Reading. When it was time for us to go on, there were maybe 30k people trying to get in and it was getting dangerous. The promoter said to us “will you go on after Bjork on the main stage” and I was like “no fucking way”, this is like our first real show. I’m not gonna headline Reading, so we started playing in that tent and it was so hot and fucking packed, there were people climbing the rafters and the security guards were passing out. The promoter looked at me and said “you gotta stop, you gotta stop” so I said to the audience ‘I’m sorry, we’ve gotta stop’ and they went ‘boooooooo’ and he went ‘keep playing keep playing’.
The Emotional One
Wembley Stadium, London, – June 2008
Dave Grohl: The first Wembley show, when we did the two nights in 2008, that was huge for me because we never imagined we would get to the point we could do something like that. While I was on stage, I was thinking about how this whole thing started, with just this demo tape and without the intention of becoming a band and then looking around and I could see my old friends and I could see my daughter and my mother, it was really overwhelming and I fucking cried. And then the Zepellin guys came out. That to me was a big one. I felt really proud, y’know. I still feel that way but that was really the first time I felt it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8vxApXwpOg
The Painful One
Ullevi Stadium, Gothenburg, Sweden – June 2015
Pat Smear: “That’s tough, there’s a lot of memories there, but I’m sorry Dave, but I’m going to have to pick the broken leg show. That one will stay with me forever.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdi9Qjs8q68