Foo Fighters made the Sprint Center shake with sound last night

Foo Fighters, with Royal Blood
Sprint Center
Friday, August 21, 2015

If any one man is on the front lines to keep rock music alive and well, it’s Dave Grohl. He’s saving old recording studios and equipment. He’s soldiering on despite his well-known leg injury suffered during a show earlier this year in Europe (prompting the creation of some pretty great ‘break a leg’ tour T-shirts). And after about 30 years in the music business — doing everything from session work with David Bowie and Paul McCartney to his work with Them Crooked Vultures, Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana and the Foo Fighters — he’s not slowing down. He’s relentless.

“We’re just getting fucking started!” Grohl screamed a full two hours into the sold-out show. As it had been all night, the floor beneath us shook from the crowd response. The band roared on for nearly three hours, and the audience roared back just as loudly. Under King Dave, seated quite appropriately on his throne of guitar necks and “lasers and shit” (his wording), rock is alive and well. 

Royal Blood (one of Grohl’s favorite bands, according to the man himself) opened the show with huge, heavy, thrashing drums and snarling, distorted guitar. The two-piece out of Brighton, England, flew to the top of the U.K. rock charts last fall, and despite not having truly broken in the U.S. yet, the two completely commanded the Sprint Center last night as if they had already unseated the Black Keys. Between looped riffs, singer-guitarist Mike Kerr proved he was ready for the huge stage, throwing his arms up to generate audience response, which was warmly returned. 

“This is pretty fucking big for a band like us,” Kerr told the audience. He asked the stage manager to turn up the lights so that he could see the entire crowd. He put his arms up, prompting the audience to do the same, soaking it in. The highlight was the band’s closer, the bruising, powerful “Out of the Black,” which ended with the band’s fantastic drummer, Ben Thatcher, standing on top of his drum kit, pounding mercilessly. 

Immediately after Royal Blood closed out its set, the Foo Fighters banners came down around the stage, shrouding it from audience view. The venue was packed and buzzy. The audience flooded merch tables and any available beer vendor walking by. Then, just after 8:30 p.m. and with the stage still shrouded, the lights dropped and the opening notes to “Everlong” came in loud. In a flash, the banners were stripped away, revealing the band, with Grohl at center, perched high on his throne of rock (designed by him in a haze after coming out of surgery). 

That song, like so many in the set, is deeply infectious. Live, the band amps up the tempo, and Grohl’s voice is much more gravelly. He screamed out at the audience, banging his head and healthy leg hard, as if to compensate for his other leg, still in a walking boot. Midway through the song, Grohl’s throne began moving down the thrust of the stage, deeper into the audience, with him headbanging all the way. At the end of the song, the decibel level of the audience could rival that in Arrowhead. My ears hurt.

“That’s just the first one,” Grohl shouted at the audience, beaming. “It’s gonna be a long fuckin’ night!” The band kept the energy explosive, with “Monkey Wrench” and “Learn to Fly.”

Grohl is a master showman, even when seated. His face is so expressive, and he has an awareness that — throughout the majority of the show — all eyes are on him. He gives it all in performing; he looked at each part of the crowd, eyes wide open, and leaned deeply each way, as his throne moved back and forth on the thrust.

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Even as Grohl’s impressive energy can sometimes (most of the time) be the center of the show, the rest of the band isn’t lacking for personality. Taylor Hawkins grinned and pounded his drums with untiring energy, sometimes even resembling Animal from The Muppets, with a fan continually blowing his beach blond hair out of his face. Pat Smear, a legend in his own right going back to the punk band the Germs, bounced around the right end of the stage, smoking between songs and taking hits off of a wine bottle stowed in his very own ice bucket by his monitor. 

About 40 minutes into the set, the band took a break and Grohl, on his throne (as he was all night), cruised down the thrust into the middle of the stadium to tell the audience the story of how they came to see him sitting atop such a thing. 

“For those of you who have never seen the Foo Fighters before, I don’t always sit in this fucking thing. It’s embarassing.” He then directed the audience to the giant LCD monitors behind the stage, on which the video of his leg-breaking fall was shown twice, as Grohl offered play-by-play, as well as an imitation of and sweet thank you to the Swedish doctor who literally held his leg together for the rest of that show. He also showed hospital photos, including the X-ray of his leg, now with a metal bar and pins holding his bones together.

“It ended up being a great show,” Grohl explained. “But don’t ever get behind me in line [at the airport].” He then called for the lighting guy to be given a break, and asked people to break out their cell phone lights, for a slowed-down version of “Big Me.”

The setlist spanned the band’s career, offering everything from the big ’90s hits to acoustic versions of “Skin and Bones” and “My Hero.” As Grohl gave formal introductions to the band around the two-hour mark, they got playful, indicating a few covers to come. Hawkins did a decent impression of Freddie Mercury’s famous scat from Wembley Stadium, and the band teased the crowd with clips of Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”, Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein,” and Van Halen’s “I’m the One.” Hawkins later reprised the Mercury impression, with the band’s full cover of David Bowie/Queen’s “Under Pressure,” which despite the near impossibility of Hawkins (or anyone, for that matter) to come near Mercury’s vocal range, was still incredibly fun to watch. The band also put the Van Halen shoes back on, as well as those of Tom Petty, covering “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” and “Breakdown,” respectively.

Naturally, throughout the evening the audience responded most to the Foo’s driving hits, including “All My Life” and “Times Like These,” which again caused the floor beneath us to shake from all of the movement in the stadium. The volume of the band itself was commanding, even sometimes punishing. This band delights in giving the crowd what it wants, and the strong relationship this band has with its audience seems to be strengthening. They’ve got something figured out. And while something surely was lost in not being able to see Grohl throw his body around the way he typically does at a live show, it’s not as much as I’d expected. Seeing the band perform is about seeing Grohl and knowing his place in rock history. Even seated, he delivers all of that and more by being intensely engaged throughout the set, which rounded out last night at around two hours and 45 minutes. 

The band has also figured out how to gracefully avoid the obligatory encore. “We’re not going to do the fake encore thing where we go away and then pretend like we’re not going to come back,” Grohl explained. “Let’s just make these last two count.” And, closing with “Best of You,” the Foo Fighters delivered. May Grohl continue his reign — and next time, he’ll even be upright to do so.

Royal Blood Setlist:
Come On Over
You Can Be So Cruel
Figure It Out
Little Monster
One Trick Pony
Ten Tonne Skeleton
Loose Change
Out of the Black 

Foo Fighters Setlist:
Everlong
Monkey Wrench
Learn to Fly
Something From Nothing
The Pretender
Big Me
Congregation
Walk
Cold Day in the Sun
Skin and Bones
My Hero
Outside
Breakout
All My Life
Times Like These
Under Pressure  (Queen & David Bowie)
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love (Van Halen)
Breakdown (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers)
This Is a Call
These Days
Best of You

For the full slideshow from last night, go here.