The 1995 album Dave Grohl would never perform live in full: “I f**king hate that”
The unspoken rule about all Foo Fighters shows is that Dave Grohl leaves everything on the stage.
Even though the band could have easily ended up as a group of random musicians after Grohl recorded the debut on his own, he knew he needed a musical family around him to truly enjoy what he was doing. And even while making the best records he could, he never wanted to come across as self-indulgent when he performed.
Because as much as he’s looked at as one of the biggest rock and roll gods of his generation, Grohl was still the same guy who had performed with Scream back in the day. He never wanted to be thought of as better or greater than any of the biggest names in his record collection, and even when he’s performing in front of a stadium full of people, he seems like the kind of guy that would meet you after the show for a beer if you asked him nicely.
And it’s not like he ever tried to get overly ambitious whenever making any of his records. The most extravagant record he ever made was probably In Your Honor back in 2005, but the only thing that it served to do was remind everyone of his softer side. It was fun while it lasted, but the fact that he can go from getting raw and introspective to making an album full of disco-fied rock versions of Bee Gees tunes pretty much tells you all you need to know.
He wasn’t taking himself that seriously by any stretch, but he did have a bone to pick with artists who treated their albums like precious art pieces. There are certainly plenty of bands that have tried their hand at making their answer to Sgt Pepper or Physical Graffiti, but Grohl drew the line at someone trying to play one of their albums from front to back whenever they performed live. Most people wanted to fall in love with the world a record creates, and Grohl didn’t need to be playing everything that he recorded onstage.
There was a lot of opportunities for him to play records like The Colour and the Shape or There is Nothing Left to Lose live, but Grohl figured that he was better off giving everyone a variety of hits, saying, “F–k, man! I don’t like it when a band’s tour is just to play one past record. I f–king hate that,” he said. “It’s presumptuous. It’s lazy. We’ve already written that [record] off. I mean, I don’t mind playing a lot of those old songs just to revisit.”
At the same time, it really depends on a case-by-case basis in some respects. A lot of Foo Fighters records don’t really have a set agenda about them, and even if they are just the best collections of songs that Grohl and the boys know how to make at any given time, it’s not like they were ever going to make some glamorous rock opera in the same way that David Bowie might have done back in the day.
Even some of Grohl’s favourite bands weren’t safe from playing their entire record live, either. Say what you want to about bands like Pink Floyd that put on a massive spectacle when they made records like The Wall, but years after the fact, getting a band like Rush to go through the entirety of an album like Moving Pictures was the perfect way of giving fans what they want, especially if it meant unearthing a few songs along the way like ‘The Camera Eye’.
Then again, it really speaks to the kind of musician that Grohl always saw himself as way before he even became a rock and roll star. His music was all about the punk tradition of not giving the audience a second of let-up, so it was better to kill every single night with the songs they know will work instead of seeing what works in front of an audience for the first time.
