Why Foo Fighters stopped playing ‘Big Me’ live
Foo Fighters have been an ever-present fixture of the music scene for the best part of 30 years. Ostensibly known as the drummer of Nirvana’s band when they arrived with their debut album in 1995, they quickly demonstrated that they were much more than this reductive understanding.
Whilst their debut record can be categorised as just another ’90s alternative rock opus, their follow-up, 1997’s The Colour and the Shape, quickly dissipated any aspersions. It is now hailed as one of the best rock albums of the decade.
Boasting tracks such as ‘Monkey Wrench’, ‘My Hero’, and their go-to anthem, ‘Everlong’, it confirmed two things. The first was that Dave Grohl was not just a drummer but an adroit songwriter in his own right. The second was that Foo Fighters were to have a long and glittering career ahead of them. In fact, their upwards trajectory was only recently interrupted by the untimely death of their drummer Taylor Hawkins.
Dave Grohl clearly shows great strength in times of adversity. After Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s suicide in April 1994, he had a relatively brief time away from music before returning from the shadows with the first Foo Fighters record. This astounded everyone, as for many, the tragedy that engulfed Nirvana would take years to get over.
Then, shortly after Hawkins’ death, Grohl and the Foo Fighters organised two all-star tribute concerts in London and Los Angeles to remember their late friend, wherein they played a host of classics for fans. This was another remarkable display of his internal strength.
In fact, there have been many moments across Grohl’s career that have culminated in him being adored both as a man and musician. One area in which he has really captured the hearts of fans has been with his comedic aptitude, regaling them with numerous hilarious tales that only a rockstar of his stature would have.
One of the best regarding Foo Fighters comes from their cult 1996 single ‘Big Me’. The song became famous for its music video, a parody of the Mentos adverts, with the brand of mints in the video called “Footos”, and the iconic “Freshmaker” slogan changed to “The Fresh Fighter”.
The concept for the video was the idea of director Jesse Peretz, who had initially pitched it to another band. However, Foo Fighters accepted it as they felt it was perfect for their overly sugary song. Grohl later explained: “We had some difficulty finding a treatment that would suit the song, which is this short, tongue-in-cheek, ridiculously candy-coated pop tune. We didn’t want to make this big, pretentious portrait video. We wanted to make fun of ourselves and the song.”
The success of the song and video led to many instances where fans threw Mentos at the band whenever they played it live. This did not have the intended consequence, and because the Mentos hurt so much, Foo Fighters chose to retire the track. In 2006, Grohl told the Associated Press: “We did stop playing that song for a while because, honestly, it’s like being stoned. Those little … things are like pebbles – they hurt.”
However, they re-entered it into their set after Weezer started covering it on their shared “Foozer” tour. In that same interview, Grohl revealed how this made them revisit ‘Big Me’: “About maybe two weeks into the tour, Rivers (Cuomo), the Weezer singer, knocked on our door and asked if he could come in. He’s shy — it was weird, I don’t think anyone had ever knocked on our dressing room door before. And he said, “Hey, I was wondering if you guys would mind if we played your song ‘Big Me’?” And we hadn’t played that song in six, seven years, and we thought, “Yeah, have at it.” And they played it every … night. And we actually started to miss it. So once that tour ended and we went back out on our own, we kinda threw it back into the set list.”
