The Fighters Of Foo

Me and my good lady (that’s the wife) ventured out to see the Foo Fighters on Tuesday night at the NEC and even though I’m not a huge fan, enjoyed their performance immensely.

It was rather nippy when we arrived at the Arena and in true, rock and roll fashion we found the Twinnings Tea shop and had a cup of Rosie Lea (well Lesa had a coffee, and we couldn’t find the champagne, but still). We’d arrived in time to see the second half of the support act ‘Serj Tankian’ (System of a Down lead singer), however, his whining tones didn’t draw us in from our cups of warmth, so we sat in the café area for a while discussing rock and roll affairs, as you do.

We got to our seats, which were rather exceptional I must say, 15 or so minutes before the ‘Fighters’ came on and you could feel the anticipation in the air. The gentle hum of thousands of voices and the expectancy rose as the time went on. Then bizarrely a Mexican wave started to circle the Arena accompanied by a cheer as it went. (How do you actually start a Mexican wave? Answers on a postcard.)

The lights of the Arena faded to a crescendo of screams and whistles as four shadowy figures appeared, walked over and picked up or sit at their favoured instruments. Then bang, straight into their opening number to a flash of strobe lights, and there they were, the Foo Fighters energetically thrashing out ‘Let it Die’ from their new album ‘Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace’. The whole arena driven by the crowd, seemed to vibrate along with every power cord struck by the American quartet.

As the opening number ended to an expected, enthusiastic applause, without hardly taking a breath they pounded straight into ‘The Pretender’ again from their new album. The back drop of falling red bombes accompanied the tune and similar images followed as the ‘The Pretender’ then became ‘Times like these’ from the 2002 album ‘One by One’, in a seamless crossover of songs. The ‘Fighters’ creator Grohl ran up and down a specially constructed, raised, narrow runway, which stretched out from the stage and into the centre of the arena floor. Energetically strumming his six string as the fans close by took out the camera phones for pics. To end the opening section of the gig, they belted out ‘Breakout’ which was also sang by the majority of how ever many thousand of fans were inside the NEC. What a start to a gig. Electrifying..

‘Breakout’ finished and was met by the again thunderous applause and Grohl decided to give a run down of what to expect for the rest of the gig. “We’re going to play some shit” he announced, to unanimous amounts of laughter and shrieking. “And when I say shit, I don’t mean shite, I mean we’re going to play some damn, good, shit, if you know what I mean”. I kind of got the gist along with the rest of the crowd judging by their screams, and he continued. “As it’s cold outside, I want it red hot in here, and as I’m already wet, I want the sweat from you guys, dripping off the ceiling”. Hmmm that sounds lovely, I thought, I bet the missus can’t wait for that, rained on by sweat, nice. He went on “We’re going to play some new, some old and some acoustic numbers until you tell us to stop. Deal?”. More shrieks and cheers inevitably followed, as the crowd eagerly waited for the next number.

The ex-Nirvana drummer picked up his guitar and fired back into things with another new song 'Long Road to Ruin'. This went down quite well but before the audience could reflect or give their opinion on the new song the fighters of Foo quickly followed it up with the ever popular DOA. Hundreds if not thousands of fans singing along to the lyrics ‘No ones getting out of here alive’, plus most of the other words made the arena sound like a church with a choir of rockers. It was a neck hair standing up type of thing. .

Then came the highlight of the show, the Foos drummer (Taylor Hawkins) who, on a blacked out stage, picked out by a solitary spotlight, played a unbelievable drum solo which would have put Grohl to shame in his Nirvana pomp. As the solo ended a large, red, ring shaped, chandelier appeared on the ceiling in the centre of the arena, and began to get brighter as it slowly descended towards the centre of the arena floor. It was then apparent that a figure was walking round the circumference of the chandelier contraption as it descended getting ever brighter. Then as the acoustic notes of ‘Skin & Bone’ rang out everyone realised it was good old Mr Dave Grohl who had somehow appeared on the arena ceiling. It was then even more apparent that the chandelier was a stage complete with drum kit etc. As it touched down at the end of the runway linking it to the main stage, dead centre of the arena floor. The rest of the band members ran along the runway to meet the ‘new stage’ and accompanied their front man in an acoustic set including a sublime rendition of ‘My Hero’, followed by Cold Day In The Sun’ and ‘But Honestly’.

We were then introduced to the band, including a violinist, organist and a triangle player?? who had all joined the band for their unique acoustic set. Grohl who was in a jovial mood started the surrounding crowd clapping, so they could keep time as he began plucking his way through the intro of 'Everlong' as the rest of the band made their way back to the main stage. He continued his solo in the centre of the arena floor before running the length of the runway back to the stage which enabled the rest of the band to pipe up with a gigantic sound and light explosion.

‘Everlong’ continued as a two minute instrumental ending with raptures of applause, when Grohl noticed that someone had thrown something at him. It was a thong with a note asking him to ”put these on, and pose for pics”. He declined to moans from his adorning fans, only for him to respond with. “Yeah right, because you would put a strangers thong on and pose for fucking pictures”. He had a point I thought. He then took the attention off the thong by announcing “this is our last one, goodnight”. They ended with a great performance of ‘Why did you have to go away’ before they all walked off to deafening applause, whistles and screams.

The “we want more” chants and encore-whistles were halted when Grohls face appeared on all of the stage, background graphics screens. He was backstage with a type of handycam, mouthing “so do you want some more” and then gesturing with his fingers how many songs were wanted. The screams obviously got louder the more fingers he held up and soon the four Foo Fighters were back on stage and smashing out ‘In your honour’. They followed that up with a high energy performances of ‘This is Call’ and ‘Generator’ before Grohl addressed the crowd again. “Right we’re going to have a bit of fun now, we’re going to play a song we haven’t sung in 12 years, and not because you want us to, but because we want to”. ‘Alone & Easy Target’ was then cracked out as the decibels seemed to raise. But they were still keeping the best till last. After wishing everyone a “Goodnight and thanks for coming” the Foo Fighters ended their evening on stage with an immense ‘Best of You’ finale.

Some of their tracks sound very similar in my opinion, and they might not be everyone’s cup of tea (tea - rock n roll don’t forget) but they don’t half put on a earth shaking, noise intensifying, spectacular show. A truly entertaining night, and the missus loved it.!