The loss of beloved bandmate Taylor Hawkins has given the everyman dad rocker fresh focus
Dave Grohl had just begun the riff to Foo Fighters’ perennial “Everlong” when calamity struck. “My guitar just died!” he told 50,000 cold, wet, windswept fans, shock in his voice. Not one to let a little thing like broken equipment stop the rock, Grohl took the microphone off its stand and styled it out “like Bono”, dancing and singing around the stage in a convincing pastiche of a star frontman. His guitar duly fixed, he joined in for the song’s exhilarating crescendo.
The ghost of Hawkins led to Grohl’s most direct and personal lyrics yet: a defiant, triumphant coming-to-terms-with-the-shock “Rescued” sounded like a lost 90s classic; “you showed me how to grieve/never showed me how to say goodbye” goes album centrepiece “The Teacher”, a dark 10-minute stop-start epic that began the night’s encore in murky, edgy style.
Nearly 30 years in and very much aware of their veteran status – “if you’ve never seen us before, look at the old, bald motherfucker next to you and do what he does,” Grohl joked – he is so well versed in the Big Gig handbook that his everyman rock-dad shtick strikes the right chord to his cagouled public.But the self-indulgence that had crept in as the years passed – the endless guitar solos, jams that outstay their welcome, the jokes that went on a bit too long – was kept to a minimum.
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