Imagine, for a moment, what it must be like to be Dave Grohl. Eight years after your percussion career in rock's most influential band was tragically cut short, you've finally come into your own. Suddenly you're not just a relic of a cherished past - you're hot property, flattening the Carling Weekend like some kind of post-grunge Godzilla and getting gongs every time you clear your throat. As a bonus, you've also just finished a moonlighting stint in America's coolest, hardest-partying travelling rock'n'roll show with Queens of The Stone Age. It must be one hell of a high.
Deservedly, Dave Grohl is feeling good - and it shows. Tonight is exemplary, electric. We get all the hits - 'My Hero' like an echoing thunderclap, 'Learn To Fly' wooing the ladies upfront, and 'Monkeywrench', flexing its tattooed muscles like a recently escaped serial killer. Dave rattles off amusing anecdotes between songs as though he's chatting over the back fence, and when a pair of knickers are volleyed onstage he accepts them with polite surprise ("Well, these are the first personalised undies I've ever had…").
Because the Foo Fighters are a band that needed to have a body of work behind them in order to prove their importance. It isn't that they weren't good in the beginning - it's just that they've kept getting better. Several spirited new songs are exhibited as defiant proof that an album is indeed forthcoming, and threatening to be excellent.
By the time Grohl calls curtains with a solo slow-burner called 'Tired' (in which he ponders, manfully, "is this just desire, or the truth?") the jump from charming-bloke-who's-been-around-for-awhile to full-fledged rock icon has been completed. A gormless grin, a giddy wave, and he's gone. A hero, at last.
April Long
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