Reviewed on Thursday February 26 (photo by Ashley Mar)
Foo Fighters are a very decent band with some very decent songs. If we’re honest, they’re unlikely to go down in history among the greats, and yet here they are, 20 years on from the release of their debut record, playing a stadium show; their biggest yet in Sydney. Strumming the guitar in a rock band isn’t the cool thing to do anymore – far more fashionable to rap or drop the bass from behind a laptop screen – yet Dave Grohl and co. not only scream, shred and solo their way through almost three hours of madness, they evidently have a ball doing it. It’s spectacle delivered with a smile, and against all the trends, it keeps the crowds coming back.
This really is the Dave Grohl show, too; in every single one of the first five songs on tonight’s setlist, he bounds his way down the runway that leads from centre stage to a third of the way through the middle of the crowd, pointing to distant audience members in the top tier as he goes. There’s no artifice of enjoyment on either Grohl’s or his fans’ part, and it’s reflected in the band’s choice of songs – a vintage trio of ‘Learn To Fly’, ‘Breakout’ and ‘My Hero’ all arrive in this enthusiastic opening, because that’s what the fans want, and that’s what they’ll get.
Once everyone’s in the spirit of things (it doesn’t take long), the show settles into those happily decent songs that are Foo Fighters’ bread and butter. ‘Arlandria’ gets the crowd moving in the moshpit, and the energy is kept up through ‘Monkey Wrench’. There’s a rather unimaginative acoustic interlude from the frontman, before covers of some other bands’ happily decent songs. KISS (‘Detroit Rock City’), Van Halen (‘Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love’), AC/DC (‘Let There Be Rock’) and Queen/David Bowie (‘Under Pressure’) all get the nod, with Grohl and fireball drummer Taylor Hawkins alternating vocals during this B-stage breakaway. Rage Against The Machine (and current Smashing Pumpkins) skins man Brad Wilk appears for the Van Halen song, which is a welcome surprise.
After this there are only the hits left to play, which means ‘All My Life’ and ‘These Days’ get an airing, and the ‘Best Of You’ refrain echoes throughout the stadium. It all goes to show why Grohl still pulls a crowd – his Foo Fighters are one of the only groups from their era who’ve managed to pen rock songs for the mainstream without sounding bland or dated. Still, they’ve kept a genuine classic up their sleeve for the inevitable finale, ‘Everlong’. It sounds as good now as it will in another two decades.
