Dave Grohl is a rock evangelist. Photo / Brett Schewitz.
Dave Grohl is a rock evangelist. Photo / Brett Schewitz.
Review by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
Dave Grohl literally leads the charge onto the stage at Melbourne’s AAMI Park Stadium. Guitar in hand he runs on from the side at pace, barely giving the crowd time to cheer his arrival. He is a man with purpose. He is not here to muck around. He is here to Rock. Capital R.
In his rockers uniform of black shirt and black jeans, Grohl most resembles a shaggy-haired general as he leads his Foo Fighters from the front. They’ve dutifully fallen in behind him, jogging single file to their instruments as he maps the stage while blasting crunchy, thick, non-descript power chords into the stadium. It’s calamitous. More so when the band’s new drummer Josh Freese reaches his kit and begins firing off cannonball tom rolls and double kick drum artillery. Eventually, the bright noise takes shape, the power chords and snare explosions battering their way into a massively heavy, extended, rendition of All My Life.
Right from this opening salvo, it’s clear Foo Fighters will be bringing it. To be fair, they always do. But tonight it feels different. Tonight the Foo Fighters are turning it up to 11.
The only way to describe the show is a rock n’ roll assault led by a true zealot. “Who wants a f****** rock n’ roll show?!?,” Grohl yelps at the crowd during a lengthy, deep bass groove breakdown during the night’s second song No Son of Mine from the Medicine at Midnight album.
“Guess what?” he continues as the crowd cheers. “I f****** love rock n’ roll!”
Then he revs up his metal crunch over the rolling bass and the band starts riffing on Black Sabbath’s Paranoid for a hot minute before slamming into AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds before explosively chugging back to finish off No Son of Mine.
Foo Fighters live at Melbourne's AAMI Park Stadium, Monday, December 4. Photo / Brett Schewitz.
There’s not too much banter between songs. There’s a huge dramatic finish, followed by a second or two of feedback hums or crunchy guitars before they launch into the next song and do it all again. But that’s not to say Grohl is quiet. He’s positively chatty. Just his audience engagement mostly takes place inside the songs which, for the most part, have extended middle sections built in for him to chat away and go off script. He’ll start randomly playing classic blues licks, challenge the crowd to a scream off or lead a stadium chant for Freese. He’ll joke and fool around while dropping some of the heaviest classic rock riffs known to man.
It should be apparent by now, but Freese - who has kept time for everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Devo - has grunted them up. Hawkins was no slouch behind the kit and in a lot of ways it’s still hard to imagine the Foos without him so integral was he to both their sound and identity. But Freese and his constant double-kick drums and relentless tom hammering is simply a powerhouse.
This also means the end of Grohl ceding the mic to have a bash behind the kit for a song and also the rock excess of a floating drum kit. In this regard, it’s a fair trade. However, the rock excess isn’t completely absent. During the rock-psychedelia of The Teacher off their last album But Here We Are, Grohl plays a dual neck guitar. The extended freak-out of the song’s middle section is so damn good he pulls it off.
Josh Freese is now manning the drumkit, Photo / Brett Schewitz.
“We’ve been a band for 28 f****** years. We have to pack that into one show,” Grohl says before launching into Times Like These. Good as his word he manages to sneak at least one track from most of their albums into the 25-strong song set.
It of course leans on the hits. Grohl is the epitome of a crowd-pleaser and there’d be riots if you didn’t hear Monkey Wrench or This is a Call at a Foos show. But he also squeezes in the acoustic folk rock of Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners, the galactic stomp of The Sky is a Neighbourhood and the affecting, quite dazzling 70s-rock deep-cut Statues.
Not content with simply charting their history, it feels like he wants to also cover the entirety of rock history, from plucky Americana acoustic to balls-out riffs, to complex math-metal and everything in between. They slip in countless easter eggs for the rock trainspotter to delight in. For example, the riff for The Beatles’ Blackbird flutters into the grungey, quiet-loud-quiet of Nothing At All from Here We Are, and I don’t think anyone is expecting the Foos to tear into the Beastie Boys’ punk-rap classic Sabotage or that Grohl could do a passable, spirited job on Ad-Rock’s rap vocals.
Foo Fighters live at Melbourne's AAMI Park Stadium, Monday, December 4. Photo / Brett Schewitz.
“You wanna hear some Foo Fighters songs or just f*** around?!?” he shouts, before the band storms into an apocalyptic version of My Hero, Freese’s machine-gun double kick drums practically shaking the stadium.
The best parts of the show are the unexpected spaces the Foos find in their songs. Yes, after almost 30 years they know them inside out, but they stretch and pull at the familiarity dragging them into new, rockier ground where anything goes. As long as it rocks.
Grohl is a rock evangelist. Preaching the good word above his band’s thundering cacophony. He may have watered down his cultural cache from appearing in everything from movies to YouTube videos to book bestseller lists, but put a guitar in his hand and send him on stage and it’s clear the dude means it, man. He is a true believer. But, it’s also obvious it’s not enough for him to love it. He wants you to love it too. And he won’t stop rocking until you love rock as much as he does.
It has to be said, that he makes an extremely convincing case. The power of rock compels thee.
The show ends with the triumphant explosion of their 1997 hit Everlong. “One for the old school motherf*****s!” as Grohl puts it. It’s a bombastic closer that ends with Grohl’s guitar on the stage floor, wheezing out feedback static like a man who hasn’t trained properly after running a marathon. As it screeches in agony the band take a well-deserved bow before walking off.
All except Grohl, who stays and waves some more at his cheering flock of rock believers. Then he turns and jogs off the stage. First on stage and the last to leave.
Foo Fighters return to New Zealand this year with support from grunge legends The Breeders and local heroes Dick Move. They play Auckland’s Mt Smart on Jan 20, before heading to Christchurch’s Orange Theory Stadium on Jan 24, and close the tour at Wellington’s Sky Stadium on Jan 27. Tickets for all shows are on sale now.
