Dave Grohl

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• Dave Grohl

  The best thing about a Foo Fighters show is that Dave always has a way of making sure everyone in that crowd will never forget that show. He has a way of making you feel like even though your city is just another stop on the tour, you feel like you're at a particular stop on the tour that every other Foo Fighters fan on the planet wishes he/she was at. Dave Grohl used to be all about the drums. As one-third of Nirvana, he kept the beat (and, as time and history would show, had a hand in background vocals, melodies, song structure, production, etc.) while late frontman Kurt Cobain kept a crowd entranced, entertained and often encouraged -- to get just fucked up enough to think they were having the greatest night of their lives. Today, Grohl is practically a guitar god and the undeniable star of his own show, and it’s hard to imagine a time when that wasn’t so. With the Foos, the trick is presentation. They have produced their share of hits — the likes of Best of You, My Hero and Times Like These are plenty easy to sing along to but there is nothing especially complicated about the music. It’s all power chords and big choruses. So, in a lot of ways, the Foo Fighters are all about the illusion of being a big rock band. The lighting/video rig above the stage is massive; the catwalk in the middle of the floor led to a second, back-of-audience platform that gave Grohl control of the room when he wanted it; and Grohl himself is larger than life — a superstar of his industry for 20 years. He’s a magnetic figure, one who can elevate the middling quality of the music simply by sweating a bit. Those back-of-room moments only accentuated the feeling that Grohl is the band, despite the fact that there were four very talented musicians on stage with him (and a keyboard player).

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  by Rachel_Grohl