LIVE REVIEW: FOO FIGHTERS, Perth – 8 March, 2015

LIVE REVIEW: FOO FIGHTERS, Perth – 8 March, 2015
NIB Stadium, Perth, Western Australia – Sunday, 8 March, 2015
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

What a show. Spanning almost two and half hours the biggest indie rock band in the world bashed out songs from all eight of the studio albums they’ve released in their twenty-years together, as well as a few choice cover versions, leaving something in the region of 25,000 fans totally exhilarated.

This is how you deliver a rock show, folks: warming the buzzing crowd up with the dynamically building Something From Nothing from latest album Sonic Highways, before launching into crowd favourite The Pretender. This one lacked some of the teeth it normally does due to guitar problems experienced by Pat Smear, but epic deliveries of Learn To Fly, Breakout, My Hero and Big Me set the tone for the rest of the night.

Grohl’s reputation as the super-nicest guy in rock music was held up as he joked effortlessly with the crowd, introduced the band playfully – a snippet of Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust highlighting Nate Mandel’s bass playing and drummer Taylor Hawkins’ vocals was a fun highlight – and told how the concert had to be put back a day so he could fly home to attend a Father-Daughter dance with his kid. Fresh off the fifteen hour flight back here and with a dose of food poisoning from the dance, he still chugged a beer to appease the hungry crowd, joking though to some of the more insistent folk at the front that “next time you’ve got food poisoning I’m coming to your house to watch you chug a fucking beer!”

Hawkins again took the mic for Cold Day In The Sun, before the insistent Arlandria and a breathless Monkey Wrench took proceedings to a mid-way climax.

With the rest of the band taking a break, Grohl battled on with an acoustic version of Skin And Bones delivered from the end of the long walkway through the crowd, accompanied by Rami Jaffey’s accordion. It’s moments like these that make a Foo Fighters show special.

Grohl then got halfway through Times Like These before the band reappeared on a tony revolving stage set halfway along the walkway ramp, finishing the song like the best bar band in history, playing before 25,000 revellers at a lock-in party.

And a party is exactly what came next. The passion of Grohl for rock n’ roll has been well documented and his band has always been about celebrating that – hence shows that would exhaust mere mortals, and on this mini-stage, dwarfed almost by the arena and the night sky, it was time for a few well-selected covers.

The ultimate party pub song, The Faces’ Stay With Me, sung by Hawkins, was simply great, as was the furious juggernaut of AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock – all the band instantly throwing serious rock shapes as soon as it started. Under Pressure, originally by David Bowie & Queen, showed signs that the band were tiring, especially vocally, but the show wasn’t over yet – even though they would trim a few songs (This Is A Call, Wheels, another cover – Kiss’s Detroit Rock City, and Generator) from the set-list. With Grohl being ill, no-one could begrudge him that after almost two-and-a-half hours, though.

“There’s two things this band don’t do,” assured Grohl as the sweat dripped from him. “One: we don’t go off and wait to be called back for an encore. We’ll just play ‘til the fucking end. Two: we don’t say goodbye, ‘cos we’ll be back!”

The triple whammy of These Days, Best Of You and Everlong closed out the show, and despite the few minor issues mentioned above, it’s highly unlikely anyone felt they got less than they’d paid for. Far from it – it’s highly unlikely we’ll get a better concert this year, and let’s hope it isn’t another four years before they return.

Set List:
Something From Nothing
The Pretender
Learn To Fly
Breakout
My Hero
Big Me
Congregation
Walk
Cold Day In The Sun
Arlandria
Monkey Wrench
Skin and Bones (acoustic)
Times Like These
Stay With Me
Let There Be Rock
Under Pressure
All My Life
Outside
These Days
Best Of You
Everlong

Category: Live Reviews