August 29, 2008 15:51

Fake Foo Fighters speak out

FF'ers played up to the idea they were Dave Grohl and co

Photo Gallery: Foo Fighters

The band who got mistaken for the Foo Fighters at this year's Reading And Leeds Festivals have admitted they played up to the rumours they were the American rockers.

As previously reported the FF'ers, a British punk band, performed at the Festival last weekend (August 22-24) on the BBC Introducing Stage, causing chaos as festival-goers thought they were about to see a secret gig from Dave Grohl and co.

Fans threw bottles, mud and cans at the band throughout their show.
However it seems they have partly bought it upon themselves.

Speaking to NME.COM the group's guitarist, Billy Watts, admitted they played up to the Foo Fighters rumours once they knew about them.

He said: "The idea that we were [the] Foo Fighters seemed so idiotic to us we did not think a debunking of the rumour was necessary, so we did the opposite and began to tease the believers by doing stupid stuff like hiding lyrics about our page and adding a photo of their beloved rock star Dave Grohl."

However he added that it still seemed pretty clear they were not the Foo Fighters.

Watts explained: "Even with these little surprises scattered around the evidence that pointed to us not being Foo Fighters was very strong."

Watts also denied that they abandoned their gig mid-set.

He continued: "At Leeds Festival we received a few bottles and chants but nothing that surprised us. However the crowd at Reading Festival was completely insane. We did not 'abandon' the stage as some people report, but played our set minus two songs - finishing at the point my guitar had been knocked out of tune for the third time, my best mate had been hit in the head with a battery, and Kate, our singer, had been hit with a full can of cider."

Watts berated the people that had shown such anger towards his band.

"What surprised us at Reading was that it was not like playing to pissed off Foo Fighters fans, but more like trying to play while a large group of Foo Fighters football hooligans poured as much pre-meditated abuse and hatred up on us as was possible," he said.

He added: "We are quite content with the reaction we got, a lot of festival audiences nowadays seem to be completely fucking boring, so it was very exciting for us to play to thousands to people who wanted to kill us."