Dave Grohl certainly knows how to create a sense of occasion. It’s been almost a decade since Foo Fighters last touched down at Mad Cool, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Red flares burst from the stage and a viewing platform in the middle of the field, smoke filling the packed arena to signal the band’s first show in Madrid since they played this very festival in 2017. “Hey!” Grohl roars as he takes the stage. “Are you fuckin’ ready?”
What follows is an opening salvo for the ages, as the six-piece crank up the temperature amid an already pretty toasty Spanish heatwave. Who else could kick off with a mean ‘All My Life’, a feverish ‘The Pretender’ and a ‘Times Like These’ so pummelling it almost manages to banish the memory of that agonising Live Lounge Allstars Covid cover?
By the second song, Grohl has already tipped what looks like a pint of beer over himself, his tangled hair streaked over his face as he shrieks: “I got a question: do you love rock’n’roll music?” Given that he leads the sprawling crowd in an a cappella singalong of ‘My Hero’ and later turns the lights up on tens of thousands of fans screaming their lungs out to ‘Monkey Wrench’, the answer seems to be strongly in the affirmative.
Having somehow weathered Taylor Hawkins’ tragic death and moved past the personal scandal that momentarily dented his image as the Nicest Guy In Rock, Grohl is clearly in a reflective mood. “We’ve been a band for 30 years,” he says. “31! So we’re gonna play as much as we can.” Curiously, tonight’s two-hour set features not a single song from Foos’ punky, defiant new album ‘Your Favorite Toy’, as the gang instead honour their legacy with a rummage through the back catalogue.
Credit: Mad Cool
Grohl heralds the “old school” likes of ‘Big Me’ and ‘This Is A Call’, while 2017’s ‘The Sky Is a Neighborhood’ is received almost as uproariously as the band’s ‘90s and early ‘00s classics. Then he takes it back even further with a haunting ‘Marigold’, which was released as a Nirvana track with Grohl on vocals. It’s a highlight of the show, underlining the epic musical journey he’s undertaken and his almost unparalleled status as a rock’n’roll survivor.
To really ram the point home, he then invites each member of the group to perform a track from their ultra-cool pre-Foos bands. The highlight of this section is a brutal ‘Manimal’ by ‘70s LA punks the Germs, which featured Pat Smear, whom Grohl accurately dubs “the coolest motherfucker on planet Earth”. Even Hawkins gets his moment, as the frontman dedicates ‘Aurora’ to the fallen drummer.
Of course, it’s no accident that tonight’s rendition of ‘No Son of Mine’ features a snippet of Motörhead‘s ‘Ace of Spades’ – it’s a timely reminder of Foo Fighters’ place on the Mount Rushmore of rock’n’roll greats. “Thank you very much for the last 31 years,” Grohl pants at the end of this epic set. “You’ve made our lives very beautiful.”
Foo Fighters played:
‘All My Life’
‘The Pretender’
‘Times Like These’
‘Rope’
‘Stacked Actors’
‘My Hero’
‘Learn to Fly’
‘These Days’
‘Walk’
‘This Is a Call’
‘No Son of Mine’ (with Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” snippet)
‘Wheels’
‘Marigold’
‘Big Me’
‘La Dee Da’
‘Run’
‘Invincible’ / ‘Seven’ / ‘One Headlight’ / ‘Manimal’ / ‘Tap Dancing in a Minefield’
‘Monkey Wrench’
‘Breakout’
‘The Sky Is a Neighborhood’
‘Aurora’
‘Best of You’
‘Exhausted’
NME is the official media partner of Mad Cool
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