Best. Band. Ever.
It’s really very simple - the Foo Fighters rock.
It’s now the day after the Foos gig at Hyde Park, and I can hardly walk.
I’ve got blisters on both feet, I feel like I’m about 9 pints of liquid short after sweating profusely yesterday (most notably whilst striding magnificently up Oxford Street at 10.30pm in a desperate attempt to get to a tube station ahead of the other 85,000 people who were haemoraging out of Hyde Park in search of transportation), and I’m now more firmly convinced than ever that Mr Dave Grohl is, in fact, “the man”.
Having seen them at the NEC in december, I was expecting a good gig. I wasn’t that arsed about seeing any of the support acts (in fact I missed Juliette & the Licks and most of Angels and Airwaves sets), but I had a sneaky feeling that this gig might just kick a tiny bit of ass.
Dave Grohl admitted part way through the set that when he was asked about whether he’d want to play Hyde Park, he thought it was “a pretty fucking big gig” and that “85 thousand people is huge. Shit, if only 30 thousand come to see us, it’ll still be our biggest gig ever”. Damn right it’s a big gig, especially when those 85,000 eager punters snap up all the tickets and make it a straight-up sell out gig… with Mototrhead as support! That’s a whole lot of Rock!
Suffice to say that they were awesome.
Not even the fact that approximately 84,994 of those other punters seemed to think that me and my 5 mates bore an uncanny resemblance to doors and were thus ideal for them to attempt to walk through in a misguided attempt to get closer to the stage, or even the absolute dickhead who spend much of the Foos set flailing about in front of me like an epileptic in a strobe-light factory and making my blood boil with his every movement, gesture, or breath could detract from the fact that it was a fucking brilliant gig.
And the encore? It started with Taylor Hawkins doing a Freddie Mercury-esque “Eh oh!” back-and-forth with the frenzied crowd, and then Roger Taylor and Brian May came on stage to throw in some old-school crowd-pleasing rock skills. And Dave even ran approximately half a mile down the catwalk throught the “golden circle” to play out directly to us plebs at the back. What a nice chap.
So, are the Foos the best band ever? I think they just may be.
Dave Grohl could so easily have become swamped with the trappings and attitude of Rock God-hood, but apparently he’s a genuinely nice bloke - Lemmy said so, so it must be true. A nice bloke who can wield a guitar with aplomb, get a crowd on his side just by walking on stage, and who has contributed to numerous side-projects and one-offs over the past few years too.
So thank you, Kurt Cobain. If you hadn’t blown your brains out Mr Grohl might have stayed in your shadow, may never have come to the fore and may never have brought us one of the best bands I have ever encountered.
Now if only I can actually set aside some time to learn to play the guitar that’s currently gathering dust 2 feet away from me, I too could be a Rock God. Maybe one day…