“You guys wanna sing a song with me?” Dave Grohl asks the sun-kissed crowd at the first of two sold-out gigs at Anfield, already drenched in beer, sweat, and god-knows-what. “You guys wanna sing 30 songs with me? It’s gonna be a long night motherfuckers.”
He’s not wrong. You pretty much know what you’re going to get at a Foo Fighters show, and they always put the hours in to play “aaaaaaaaaaall night”. Along with mammoth sets, they also ladle on the hits and the brotherly love – two things they famously love up in Liverpool.
While still obviously massive, Anfield feels somewhat more intimate than other stadiums (here’s a 60,000-strong crowd compared to Wembley’s 90,000), but Grohl and the band do their utmost to pull everyone to their bosom in an escapable bear hug. Fitting red flares fill up the air from the top of the stage as the band step through the crimson mist with Grohl pegging it down the short gangway before the brutal opening one-two punch of ‘All My Life’ into ‘The Pretender’. “I’ve got a question: do you motherfuckers love rock’n’roll?” he asks. Go on then, and ‘Times Like These’ makes it three.
They wouldn’t be on the road without a reason, mind, and new number ‘Of All People’ from the recent ‘Your Favorite Toy’ turns the dial up to gnarly, but still can’t quite find a deserving home in the hearts of many chattering casual fans. They know how to counter it, mind. “Who’s old school?” asks Grohl before the early stoner rock banger ‘Stacked Actors’, seamlessly rolls into ultimate crowd pleaser ‘My Hero’, the grunge meets Tom Petty grace of ‘Learn To Fly’ and mass sing-along of ‘These Days’. It’s relentless, like being trapped in a bar with a malfunctioning jukebox.
That laid-back rock club vibe is what makes this work. Foos don’t have the bells, whistles, pyro, or blockbuster special effects of other standard stadium acts, just tunes and banter. Who’d have thought that ‘This Is A Call’, ‘For All the Cows’ and ‘Big Me’ – written for their 1995 debut and for sweaty little rooms – would land like Queen classics on this pitch? They keep the backroom jam energy up by splicing a little Motörhead into the Metallica-meets-Sabbath chug-along of ‘No Son Of Mine’ before bringing the vast venue in for a run of numbers on the B-stage, peaking with the tale of writing Nirvana B-side ‘Marigold’ on Kurt Cobain’s couch, and the tender ‘Aurora’ being dedicated to the late, great Taylor Hawkins.
Then they really bring it home medley of covers from each members’ past bands (No Use For A Name, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Germs, to name just a few of them) and with Grohl and drummer Ilan Rubin swapping instruments for a laugh. It’s worth remembering that Foos are much more than “Dave Grohl’s other band” but a pretty mighty supergroup.
Our intrigue is piqued when Grohl picks up a young chap from the audience for the challenge of completing a Rubik’s Cube on stage for the privilege of drumming ‘Rope’ with the band. He smashes it, then the illusion is shattered when we learn it’s actually the boyfriend of Grohl’s daughter Harper, and today is his 18th birthday. After an admirably out there encore of the psych-y meandering of ‘The Teacher’ and early deep cut ‘Exhausted’, the staple closing banger ‘Everlong’ and the red fireworks lighting up the sky make everyone in Liverpool feel like it’s their special day.
It all feels a little too familiar to the usual Foos fare, but Radiohead they are not. This is what they do. Grohl asks why oh why the band are only playing these two Liverpool gigs in their home away from home of the UK this year, but assures us that this is merely “a cocktail party before the big dinner” – with talk of some big plans in Blighty for 2027. For now, “this is just the first date”, so pucker up for Saturday and party on.
Foo Fighters played:
‘All My Life’
‘The Pretender’
‘Times Like These’
‘Of All People’
‘Stacked Actors’
‘My Hero’
‘Learn to Fly’
‘These Days’
‘Walk’
‘This Is a Call’
‘No Son of Mine’
‘Wheels’
‘Marigold’
‘For All the Cows’
‘Big Me’
‘Under You’
‘La Dee Da’
‘Caught in the Echo’
‘Invincible’ / ‘Seven’ / ‘One Headlight’ / ‘Manimal’ / ‘Tap Dancing in a Minefield’
‘Monkey Wrench’
‘Breakout’
‘Aurora’
‘Rope’
‘Best of You’
‘The Teacher’
‘Exhausted’
‘Everlong’