Foo Fighters Live at Wembley Stadium
DVD (Sony BMG)
A curious thing has happened to Foo Fighters over the years. Despite the fact that their albums have become steadily more stale and less imaginative since 1997’s superb The Colour and The Shape, their level of popularity has gone in entirely the opposite direction. Grohl himself asks the sell-out Wembley crowd, “How did this band get so f***ing big?”, and I must confess to wondering exactly the same thing. That is not to say that I dislike Foo Fighters – far from it – but I do find it utterly baffling that while, a decade ago, nuggets of pop perfection such as ‘Big Me’ and proper stadium-sized anthems like ‘February Stars’ were generally well received but failed to make the dent on the mainstream consciousness that they deserved, now turgid classic-rock pastiches like ‘Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)’ and ‘Long Road to Ruin’ are played to adoring crowds of 80,000. If anyone can explain this curious evolution, then answers on a postcard (or an email, or whatever).
The thing that made Foo Fighters so interesting in the first place was the fact that they produced songs that, like the mighty ‘Everlong’, were bitter little pills coated in sugar by a grinning charmer who was actually, behind the mile wide smile, a bit pissed off that he was still living in the shadow of Nirvana. However, with Grohl spending an increasing amount of time hanging out with Jack Black and pulling silly faces in videos it was always clear that he and his band aspired to mainstream superstardom.
Now they’re one of the biggest crowd-pullers on the planet, and they just can’t quite live up to their billing.
A large part of the problem is that Grohl himself seems to have forgotten (or to be deliberately avoiding) what made him so popular in the first place – his sheer likeability. Instead he has attempted to reinvent himself as a hairy rock god, head-banging furiously and swearing like a trooper. It’s an unconvincing act as neither the songs – no matter how many superfluous guitar solos or drum fills are crowbarred into them – nor Grohl himself can live up to it. Indeed, if confirmation were needed that Grohl has missed the point in his quest for rock credibility, it can be found in the encore in which Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones are brought onstage to rattle through a couple of ill-conceived cover versions. The message is clear – “Look! We really are rock royalty!” – but it’s a message which loses its impact somewhat when you consider that only a couple of months later Page took to the stage with the distinctly un-rock and roll Leona Lewis. It must be said, however, that Page and Jones are – even at their ripe old age – still more entertaining in their brief appearances than the interminably dull Nate Mendell and Chris Shiflett, which is damning with faint praise to say the very least.
The most frustrating thing about the whole affair is that Foo Fighters are, for the most part, an excellent band. Set opener ‘The Pretender’, and a few other tracks like ‘Breakout’ and ‘Learn to Fly’ are outstanding, and threaten to give the evening the shot in the arm it badly needs, but the momentum is never sustained. The biggest crime of the evening is an anaemic version of crowd favourite ’Everlong’, in which Grohl stands alone at the end of a runway (arena bands must always have a runway, you see) playing the song on a single guitar. Only when the rest of the band join in in the final chorus does the song come to life, and by then it’s too late.
But still, 160,000 tickets sold for two nights at Wembley speaks louder than one grumpy review and Foo Fighters are only playing arenas this size because their popularity demands it. They just don’t seem to fill the space as well as seasoned stadium acts like Bon Jovi or even Muse (who dazzled in the very same venue), and they’re trying all the wrong things to rectify the situation. It’s just a shame that the band don’t seem content to play to their strengths, and instead seem determined to be something that they’re not.
Brian Sherry
