Foo Fighters On Friday night they opened their encore at Citi Field in Queens with the penultimate song from their most recent album, the 10-plus-minute “The Teacher.” The song is a bit of an outlier for the group, as frontman Dave Grohl prefers a double-neck Gibson guitar for the progressive ride. While the song is dedicated to both his late mother (a teacher) and himself,He ate the former drummer of the Foos, Taylor HawkinsThe title could easily apply to Grohl’s current approach to live shows: a rock ‘n’ roll teacher who shares everything he knows about the craft in a spectacular three-hour class.
Grohl’s banter between songs illustrated a self-imposed duty to put on a great show, especially after Wednesday’s concert at Citi Field was canceled midway due to hazardous weather. Legacy and responsibility were very much on his mind, as the singer dedicated several moments to the Night One crowd that suffered through the shortened set, mentioning several times how committed the band was to rawand brought out the Foos’ 30-year legacy. But it makes sense: As bands built around drums and distorted guitars become increasingly out of fashion, it’s refreshing to have a frontman keeping this classic sound alive.
From the start, Grohl prowled the stage, more hyena-like than man-like, with a mane of hair blowing everywhere and a gleam in his eye as he repeatedly dumped water bottles over his head to cool off. While some singers in their fifties might shy away from screaming and let the audience do the work, Grohl went the extra mile, with a superhuman ability to rock his microphone on fist-pumping songs like “Monkey Wrench” and “Best of You.”
Throughout the night, there were several other nods to classic rock hits, whether it was Grohl incorporating The Beatles’ “Blackbird” into an extended guitar break, band introductions that included snippets of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” and even a jocular rendition of Led Zeppelin’s divisive classic “Stairway To Heaven” that was played when a concertgoer needed help.
And what tribute to rock’s past would be complete without a drummer to flail his limbs a la Keith Moon or John Bonham? After Hawkins’ death, the Foos recruited veteran Josh Freese, session drummer extraordinaire and former member of dozens of bands, including Guns N’ Roses, A Perfect Circle, Devo and the Vandals. Freese’s precision and control allow for plenty of thunderous fills, and he could change direction on a dime as needed for Grohl to lead the band, repeating sections to let the crowd sing along, lowering the tempo for breaks and riffing to give classic tracks new verve. Freese is a technical marvel and is great at keeping the band moving, even when some of the songs might work better if they matched the primal drum grooves of Grohl’s original recordings, as on “My Hero” and “Everlong.”
Grohl, Freese and the rest of the band — guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel, guitarist Chris Shiflett and keyboardist Rami Jaffee — played a well-orchestrated setlist full of stadium-ready hits (“Times Like These,” “Learn to Fly,” “All My Life”) and some deeper cuts for fans (“Arlandria,” “Generator,” the first single “This Is a Call”). The group smartly limited the new material to heavy tracks that allowed the energy to stay high — after all, the crowd isn’t going to run to the bathroom if Grohl is headbanging and screaming at the top of his lungs, even if they don’t know the lyrics.
As fireworks erupted on the baseball field during the band’s final song (a boisterous version of “Everlong”), it was clear that Foo Fighters are as much an American institution as baseball itself, carrying the flag for rock ‘n’ roll.