Dave Grohl and his merry men have sure picked a good day to grace Cardiff with their presence. It’s blazing hot outside and the Foo Fighters have landed on Welsh soil for the first time in 17 years, bringing their gigantic Everything Or Nothing At All tour to the city’s grandest arena, the Principality Stadium. Having first hit Wales in 1997, at the sadly missed Newport Centre – and later that year as support to the Prodigy in Cardiff – it’s fair to say the band have come a long way since then.
You know exactly what you are going to get with a Foo Fighters show – a no-frills, stripped-back rock’n’roll extravaganza. So as the band bound onstage to All My Life they go about delivering just that with methodical precision. Grohl dips his toe in the bathwater, so to speak, by asking the crowd if they like metal – teasing us with a few chords of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid and Metallica’s Enter Sandman, before launching headlong into No Son Of Mine.
Keyboard player Rami Jaffe and Grohl take the lead on the anthemic Times Like These, with the band joining in due course; Nate Mendel’s driving bass takes centre stage for La Dee Da, a deep cut from 2017’s Concrete And Gold, and then it’s time for the screamalong that is Breakout. As is tradition at massive rock concerts, the band are introduced to us – like we aren’t aware of who they are – before a guitar solo and covers medley, paying tribute to the Ramones, Devo and Nine Inch Nails, is smashed through. Which, with the onset of My Hero, is closely followed by another rock concert tradition: phones in the air, singing along to the ballad.
There’s a workmanlike attitude to the Foo Fighters, with the band working overtime to get the crowd up on its feet and moving. This is easier, of course, if you have a track like Learn To Fly in your arsenal. Grohl grabs his acoustic guitar for the night’s first visit back to their debut album – a rousing rendition of Big Me – and, before you know it, they’re rolling out yet more big tunes in the shape of Monkey Wrench.
In the night’s most emotional moment, Aurora is dedicated to late drummer Taylor Hawkins, before the Foos take us into an encore with Best Of You. They emerge a short while later, with the sweat-saturated Cardiff crowd clearly still eager for more; we’re eased into it via The Teacher, a proggy number pulled from last year’s But Here We Are, after which Josh Freese gives up his drum throne to the heir apparent. Shane Hawkins grabs the sticks for the debut single This Is A Call – released in 1995, 11 years before he was born – to a rapturous ovation.
Of course, the best is left for last and being the supreme rock juggernaut that the Foo Fighters are, Everlong gets its moment in Cardiff – once again ensuring that 70,000 punters head for Chippy Lane with a smile on their face and a ringing in their ears.
Foo Fighters, Principality Stadium, Cardiff, Tue 25 June
words CHRIS ANDREWS photos ANTHONY JAMES