'Foo Fighters secret gig' chaos at Reading Festival

Thousands of fans hurl bottles and shoes at tiny Reading stage

Aug 25, 2008
6 Comments
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Rumours of a Foo Fighters secret gig yesterday (August 24) at the Reading Festival resulted in thousands of fans causing chaos in front of the BBC Introducing Stage.

A British punk band named The FF'ers were billed to be playing on the stage at 5pm (BST), causing rumours to spread around the site that the band name was a pseudonym for Dave Grohl's band.

By the time 5pm came around 3,000 fans had gathered around the small stage. When The FF'ers came on they were bottled by the angry fans, who were expecting to see the aforementioned US rockers play a secret show. The FF'ers had to abandon their set due to the chaos.

Despite the rumours of the secret show being scuppered by The FF'ers' brief appearance, most of the fans remained by the stage. The next band on, Underground Railroad, received a similar treatment to The FF'ers, with fans hurling mud, bottles and shoes at them.

The Parisian trio responded by playing 'NYC' in frenetic fashion, then began hurling the missiles back into the crowd. They were pulled off by security soon afterwards.

After announcers had calmed the situation by explaining that Foo Fighters were not going to play, Underground Railroad completed their set to around 500 fans who had remained to watch them.

"That was a scary and punky moment for us!" drummer/singer Raf Mura told NME.COM after his band’s performance.

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Comments (6)

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Van_Mocen

Aug 26, 2008

stinky festival-goers hooligans..

lipgloss

Aug 26, 2008

getting angry because a band that was never billed to appear never appeared! christ, there must have some brain cells on show there!

Backtoreality01

Aug 26, 2008

It must have been well confusing for The FF'ers. At first they must have been realy pleased to have a massive crowd. Then they would have no idea why everyone is throwing things at them.

helsbels25

Aug 27, 2008

I was there and had heard that there was a possibility that the foos were going to be playing so had ventured over to the stage. It was unbelievable how many people who had turned up who had heard the same thing and it was so uncomfortable to see how the new bands were being treated. Ive got respect for the bands to come out in the first place with the horrible atmosphere that alot of the crowd had made. I thought festivals were a place for everyone to get together and enjoy all music, whether that being established bands or new music. It just seems that there seems to be some people nowadays who turn up just to cause trouble and ruin it for others. If the foos were there and saw the way these "fans" behaved, im sure they would be disappointed and disgusted and wouldnt have played anyway. The F Fers sounded good for the time they were on and it was just a shame the the real music lovers were not able to hear the rest of their set.

XFA-tours

Aug 28, 2008

Well said helsbells - I was there too - backstage as the FF'ers driver/tour manager for the weekend. One correction, the FF'ers DID complete their set (the sets on the introducing stage were only 20/25 minutes) - it was Underground Railroad who nearly lost their set because of a relatively small number of idiots who don't give a damn about music. All respect to the stage & festival organisers for the way they handled the situation, simply waiting the hooligans out (who, unsurprisingly, had a fairly short attention span).I should just add that, to the best of my knowledge, neither the FF-ers nor the BBC started the rumour about the Foos - but a brief Google search will show that there were a number of people who deliberately fanned the flames for no other reason than to cause trouble.