Dave Grohl had a solution in mind for anyone who didn't know the words to the song he and the other Foo Fighters were about to perform Wednesday night at the Kia Forum in Inglewood.
“Look at the old man next to you and just sing that,” he told the crowd, his stringy black hair plastered to his reddened, sweaty forehead. “Chances are you've been listening to KROQ since the early '80s.”
Wednesday's show was billed as a celebration of Grohl's 57th birthday (at one point, two stagehands brought out an enormous cake) and a fundraiser for a pair of organizations fighting homelessness in the band's hometown of Los Angeles.
But nearly four years after the shocking death of drummer Taylor Hawkins, the concert was also a showcase of Foo Fighters' essential durability: the group's dogged but joyful determination to keep going no matter what.
Wednesday's show was a fundraiser for two organizations fighting homelessness in Los Angeles.
(Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times)
Last year, the band fired Hawkins' replacement, Josh Freese, without much explanation, and then replaced him. him with Ilan Rubin of Nine Inch Nails. (In a very KROQ twist, Freese went on to take Rubin's place in Nine Inch Nails.)
The drama with the drummers followed Grohl's revelation in late 2024 that he had fathered a child outside of his marriage, a blow to the reputation of a man long considered a kind of benevolent uncle of rock 'n' roll.
And just last week, the Foos announced that guitarist Pat Smear would miss the band's upcoming concerts after accidentally “breaking the shit out of his left foot.” Jason Falkner, a former member of the great '90s psych-pop band Jellyfish who has played for years with Beck, replaced Smear at the Forum, where Rubin's bass drum had a picture of Smear's face.
Despite all that, Foo Fighters appeared as they always have: heavy, crunchy, fast, melodious.
“You know, I haven't gone to the bathroom once in this entire show,” Grohl said as he approached the two-hour mark.
After emerging in the punk scene in Washington, DC, Grohl became a star as the drummer for Nirvana; He founded Foo Fighters in 1994 as a way to deal with the death that year of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Over the decades, the band's music has steadily moved toward the kind of classic rock that punks once professed to hate (think Led Zeppelin, think Aerosmith, go ahead and think Boston), while Grohl has taken on the role of jocular frontman with an enthusiasm approaching that of David Lee Roth.
Here the Foos performed on a revolving stage that the singer happily said made him feel like “I'm in the showroom at the Mercedes dealership in Van Nuys.” (He also noted that the setup ensured that everyone would eventually “get a good look at my butt.”)
The key to the band's longevity, of course, is a deep stock of hits that now count as staples of any classic rock playlist. “Learn to Fly” and “Times Like These” were sharply melodic; “My Hero,” which Grohl dedicated to Smear and his broken foot, was somehow compelling and propulsive. “Monkey Wrench” sounded like an atomic version of “Johnny B. Goode.” And “Best of You” had a soulful touch that reminded you of Prince's famous version of the song in the rain at the Super Bowl in 2007.
Wednesday's show also celebrated Dave Grohl's 57th birthday.
(Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times)
About the halfway point, Grohl threw a bit of Motörhead's “Ace of Spades” into the Foos' “No Son of Mine” (“That was for Lemmy,” he said of the late Motörhead frontman) and then had his bandmates take a break while he sang a solo rendition of “Under You,” about his struggle to come to terms with Hawkins' passing.
The last time Foo Fighters played the Forum, he noted, was in 2022 at an all-star tribute to the drummer. After “Under You,” the rest of the group returned for a long, searching version of “Aurora,” which Grohl says was the first song he and Hawkins wrote together.
“I'm sorry we got so excited,” he said, though few in the intergenerational crowd seemed to care. (Less enthusiasm greeted the band's aimless improvisation on “Run.”)
Foo Fighters closed, as they often do, with “Everlong,” the robust mid-'90s alt-rock anthem that never seems to go out of style, even (or especially) among kids who weren't born when it came out.
“Hello,” Grohl sang coolly over a bed of twangy electric guitars, “I've been waiting here for you.”
