Foo Fighters deliver hours of rock and roll at Ford Field

Foo Fighters played a whole lot of rock show Thursday night at Ford Field, ripping, riffing and “WUUAAHHHHHH!”-ing through nearly three hours of hard charging rock and roll.

Not alt-rock, even though the band came up in the post-grunge, alternative rock movement of the ‘90s. Foo Fighters are a straight up rock band, with chugging guitars, melodic riffs and sung-screamed vocals that have already landed the band a permanent home in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. (They were inducted in 2021.)

Thursday’s concert was the band’s first at Ford Field, making it the group’s biggest Detroit concert to-date, unfolding in front of a crowd north of 35,000 fans. And it was a hit parade, especially early on: nine of the first 10 songs were radio smashes, the songs that made Foo Fighters one of the most dependable radio bands of its era. (One gripe: “My Hero” should always be saved for the end of the band’s shows, and was blown way too early in the night.)

Lead singer and rock survivor Dave Grohl played merry ringleader to his sextet, and was talkative in between songs throughout the night. He got choked up when a fan handed him a sign for Jennifer Finch, bass player for ‘90s rockers L7 and a long-ago girlfriend of Grohl’s, who died last month after a battle with cancer.

He also told a story about his first trip to Detroit, when he played Paycheck’s Lounge in Hamtramck with his first band Scream, and he slept in a sleeping bag in his band’s van outside of a home in Ann Arbor. Before leaving Hamtramck the band gassed up, and it wasn’t until late in the night when they realised they had left their cash from the night on top of the pump back in Hamtramck. When they drove back to retrieve it, their $700 was still there, and Grohl said he’s felt lucky in Detroit ever since.

It was very much a night of looking back, with Grohl, 57, joking throughout the evening of his elder “old school” status, and telling the younger folks in the audience to take their cues for what to do from the nearby dads in the crowd. He’s been Foo Fighting for 31 years, he constantly reminded the crowd, and he’s no spring chicken. (His forever enchanting guitar player Pat Smear, who still looks the same as he did when the band started, just turned 67 on Wednesday.) But the band was going for it, promising a three-hour show early on and delivering on that promise. (Well, it was two hours and 50 minutes, but who’s counting?)

There was definitely some padding in that three hours, such as when the band members took turns playing songs from their former bands, although it did give Grohl a chance to take lead vocal duty on “One Headlight,” a nod to keyboardist Rami Jaffee’s stint in the Wallflowers. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t know all the words.) And it also allowed Grohl to jump behind the drum kit and bash away while drummer Ilan Rubin briefly took on front man duties during a cover of the New Regime’s “Tap Dancing in a Minefield.”

Songs themselves were stretched out too, usually coming to a close and then starting back up with a hushed repeat of the first verse, before a loud rehash of the chorus. A jam band the Foos are not, and songs stuck closely to their set structures, even when elongated for effect. It’s like Grohl has a “no jamming” rule, and he’s tapped the sign enough times that his bandmates know not to veer too far from the center of the song, lest they get stared down by the Big Boss.

Grohl screamed his way through the megahits, opening with “All My Life,” “The Pretender” and “Times Like These” in succession, leaning on his “WUUUAAAAAHHHHHHH!” refrain anytime he felt like dropping a line or hammering a moment for emphasis. It’s an affect he leans on a little too much, losing its effect by the fourth time it’s done within a single song.

Tribune News Service