I love to write. I also love to play music. As a writer, there are certain things that will always be annoying. Sometimes you can have a great idea for a book or article, or conjure up a beautiful string of words, but a moment later the thought will be gone and no matter how hard you try, you can never remember what you forgot. As a musician, there is a continuous search for the next inspiration. Maybe it’s a sentence you’ve seen, something in the news, or certain ideologies that seem to stick with you until you put pen to paper and craft some sort of noise around it.
I say these things because, on a cold and wet Wednesday night, the Foo Fighters gave the Old Trafford cricket ground a night which they will never forget, and one that truly inspired over 50,000 people in the city of Manchester to do what they enjoy in life. As a writer and a musician, this warrants an endless amount of respect and admiration for the men that put on such an incredible show.
Okay, so maybe this got a little too deep and serious, but after waiting around for four hours and standing through God Damn and Teenage Fanclub – two support acts that were very “good but not great”, feeling more like background music – the Foos came on early and presented a mighty good case as to why their shows are held in such high esteem. Quite fittingly, the rain stopped, the sun (almost) came out, and the big, cheesy grin of Dave Grohl plastered the TV screens and the crowd couldn’t help but love him instantly.
Mountains of hits were thrown around like they were nothing, with the band playing four of their biggest songs at the beginning, whilst still having over two hours worth of those hits to play. This served to show just how consistently incredible the twenty year lifespan of the Foo Fighters has been. But it wasn’t just down to the band playing hit songs that meant the show was so good, it was the very essence of the band, and indeed Dave Grohl himself. Sure, the whole stadium went crazy for ‘All My Life’ (there has never been anything like it), but if it wasn’t for the raw energy and enthusiasm from the Foos, this song and every other part of the show may well have flopped. Instead of potential mediocrity, there was a group of men who genuinely wanted to be there for the love of “mother fuckin’ rock ‘n’ roll”, as the band put it. Amongst the jokes, audience participation, small acoustic sets (in which Grohl even got an eight year old kid from the crowd to sing ‘Times Like These’ with him on stage), the covers (Queen & David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’ was a highlight) and the music, it was as clear as day to see that performing their music to people like they did in Manchester is all the Foo Fighters have ever wanted to do.
As a writer, I long to be able to write reviews like this one, where there is so much to say about something and yet no amount of words could ever do it justice. As a musician, I long to have that inspiration from a gig that tells me to get up and do something with music and life in general, and the Foo Fighters gave all of this in dreary Manchester. By the time they bowed out with ‘Best Of You’, the memory left was unforgettable, indescribable and inspirational, but was it the best concert ever? I think you already know what my answer is.
Words by Ashley Moss