About 40 minutes into their December 4 show at Park MGM's Dolby Live theater, Foo Fighters singer Dave Grohl asked if there was anyone in the house seeing the band for the first time.
“Not to sound like an asshole, but you’re our demographic,” he said. “Tonight, we’re gonna turnt you into a Foo Fighters fan.”
The packed house roared approval. They roar approval for most everything Grohl says, because song after song after song, the band earns it. In the course of that Sunday night show—the second of two shows the Foos played at the venue—the band performed a whopping 21 songs. That's not even counting the song fragments the band members played during their individual introductions, which include “My Generation” (Nate Mendel) and “Blitzkrieg Bop” (Pat Smear).
And then there’s the extra stuff they give, the abundant cheese on top of the burger. They brought backstage guest Gene Simmons out on stage just so they could bow down to him. Grohl pointed out that keyboardist Rami Jaffee now lives in Las Vegas, “so he can avoid LA’s high tax rate.” Guitarist Smear wore a cheesy Las Vegas t-shirt he picked up in a gift shop (“He didn’t bring a change of clothes,” Grohl jokes). Grohl even shotgunned a beer by fan request, though he did so from a safe distance. (“Sorry, COVID restrictions.”)
In short, the crowd loves the Foos because, even after a quarter-century on the road, the band works hard to earn that love. They play every show as if it were their first; they rip through every song as if it were their last. They’re seemingly aware that the Foo Fighters is a unicorn, a mythical beast—one of the last few hard rock acts touring at the stadium level—and they take pains to dazzle you like one. Even if you’re an as-yet-unturnt Foo Fighters fan, that level of unselfish commitment demands respect.
Beginning the marathon with a quiet-to-loud version of “Times Like These,” the Foos delivered a living mixtape that included the hits (“Learn to Fly,” “My Hero”), the deep cuts (“Aurora,” “LA Dee Da”) and a couple of rousing covers (a faithful version of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown” and a joyous take on Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” which saw Grohl and drummer Taylor Hawkins switching places).
The band blasted through every single song in the set like electrified teenagers, and the, er, seasoned crowd—lots of gray hair out there, including my own—gave as good as they got. The only time Grohl was booed was whenever he suggested the show might be less than 2 hours plus (it definitely was not). Finally, after one last false “Goodnight,” Grohl hastily clarified, “We’ve got, like, nine more songs after this one.”
The Foo Fighters are just plain fun. Full stop. I confess that, despite being an early fan—my first Foos show was in Seattle in 1997, and I’ve caught bits and pieces of them at festivals since—I haven’t kept up with their records past the mid-aughts. But I couldn’t resist the amplified charms of “Best of You” and “The Sky is a Neighborhood.” Even the new songs from February’s Medicine at Midnight—the hefty rocker “No Son of Mine” and the shuffling “Shame Shame”—had a power and momentum that might send me back to the band’s catalog to catch up. Well before a closing one-two punch of “Monkey Wrench” and “Everlong,” I was gratefully turnt.
