In a crisply produced, marathon concert befitting the occasion, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters made their Ford Field debut Thursday night, Aug. 6.
Detroit was the second stop on the band’s 12-city North American stadium tour and their first here since 2018 — before some young concertgoers in Thursday’s impressively multigenerational crowd were born.
The biggest Detroit show in the Foo Fighters’ career came more than 31 years after the band’s smallest one, a support gig at Saint Andrew’s Hall ahead of the then-fledgling band’s debut album. Unlike that clamorous, raw-wire night in May 1995, Thursday brought a seasoned and polished outfit, with Grohl firmly entrenched as a rock-star front man decades after coming to renown at the drum kit with Nirvana.
Hair flying, tattooed arms pumping, Grohl hit the stage just after 8 p.m., and the first of his raw-throated rock screams arrived seconds later as the 2002 hit “All My Life” kicked things off with fittingly frenetic energy.
He promised the crowd early on it would be “a long-ass night,” and indeed it was, featuring nearly three hours with 31 songs and plenty of amiable banter from a band that has stealthily staked its place as one of the era’s enduring rock powerhouses.
Grohl, 57, has carried the Gen X rock banner as adeptly as anyone, a likable link between classic rock — the music that most informed his age cohort — and the post-grunge world he helped create. He inhabits a Jack Black sort of space these days, grinningly aware of rock tropes, aware that you’re aware too, and happy to play the part.
A drummer by pedigree, Grohl proved in the mid-1990s that he knew his way around a strong melody, and those catchy bits came one after the other Thursday night: There were the anthemic choruses (“My Hero,” “Breakout”), the power-pop earworms (“Big Me”), the yearning, radio-friendly hooks (“Learn to Fly” and the show-closing “Everlong”).
The galloping “This Is a Call” and “Monkey Wrench” got their requisite workouts — early Foo Fighters hits that hinted at what was to come for Grohl and company. And there were deeper dives into the catalog via songs such as “No Son of Mine,” a punk-metal bash with an injection of Motorhead. While this summer’s tour is ostensibly tied to the Foos’ recently released 12th album, “Your Favorite Toy,” the set featured just two tunes from the new record.
Thursday was the band’s first Detroit show since the 2022 death of fan-fave drummer Taylor Hawkins, and the late musician was memorialized with a shimmering extended rendition of 1999’s “Aurora,” one of Hawkins’ first performances with the group.
Veteran drummer Ilan Rubin, now manning the seat, flexed his musical muscles at Ford Field, offering dynamic showings on tunes such as “Rope,” “Best of You” and “Everlong.”
A temporary stage at the end of the catwalk hosted the night’s obligatory subdued segment, including a sweet rendition of the early Grohl composition “Marigold,” which he dedicated to the recently passed L7 bassist Jennifer Finch after spotting a fan’s sign honoring her.
The evening of good old heavy rock ‘n’ roll entertainment included a 60-minute opening set from Queens of the Stone Age, whose hard-rock riffage works as well in a big environment like Ford Field as it does in a sweaty club. The epic stoner rock of “I Appear Missing” got coupled with the buoyant bounce of “Make It Wit Chu” (complete with licks from the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You”) before all closed out with “A Song for the Dead,” a ferocious metal attack, QOTSA-style.
Front man Josh Homme was true to his rock-rebel roots: “Live free or die!” he shouted after mocking “the $60 parking and $45 beers” that come with big events and giving his verbal middle finger to the Flock Safety public cameras that face growing backlash from Americans.
Throughout the Foo Fighters’ set, Grohl noted his delighted surprise at playing “a show this big.” He vividly recounted his first time in Detroit, a 1987 show at Paycheck’s Lounge in Hamtramck, shortly after the 18-year-old drummer joined the DC hardcore band Scream.
Scream opened for the local group Laughing Hyenas, who later put the visitors up for the night many miles west at their Ann Arbor pad. The next day, Grohl and company panicked when realizing they had left their $700 gig payment (“all the money we had”) sitting atop a Hamtramck gas pump while refilling the band van.
The next day, they frantically drove to the gas station — finding that their manila cash envelope had been turned in.
“So over the years,” Grohl said, “we’ve had a beautiful relationship with this city.”
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Foo Fighters go big, get nostalgic at first-ever Ford Field concert
Reporting by Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
