Credit: Danny Clinch

Watch Foo Fighters perform ‘The Teacher’ live for the first time

Mon 19 June 2023 9:30, UK

At a recent show in Arkansas, Foo Fighters performed their ten-minute song ‘The Teacher’ live for the first time. The poignant song explores themes of grief following the deaths of drummer Taylor Hawkins and Dave Grohl’s mother, Virginia, last year. The title directly references the latter, who was a school teacher.

Grohl paints grief as a learning experience, singing: “Every page turns, it’s a lesson learned in time/ You showed me how to need, never showed me how to say goodbye”.

The frontman also encourages the listener to cherish their lives and loved ones before repeating “goodbye” at the song’s end.

‘The Teacher’ appears on the Foo Fighters’ latest album, But Here We Are, their first since the passing of Hawkins in 2022. The band reached number one in the United Kingdom, closely beating Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds to the post.

The band teased the record as “a brutally honest and emotionally raw response to everything Foo Fighters endured over the last year… a testament to the healing powers of music, friendship and family. Courageous, damaged and unflinchingly authentic”.

At the band’s Arkansas show on Wednesday, June 14th, Grohl’s teenage daughter Violet provided backing vocals during their performance of ‘The Teacher’.

Watch the band perform the song live below.