The one band Dave Grohl called the greatest live: “It’s better”
Dave Grohl never seemed to completely click with a song until he could hear it played live.
The whole point of having a great rock and roll tune meant giving it to the people directly every single time he played, and he was going to put himself through anything in order to give the fans a good time, even if it meant performing with a broken leg. But even when he was working through some of the most painful performances of all time, he had his musical icons to look up to for how to work through a set.
Because would Freddie Mercury have stopped the show after he hurt himself? Would David Bowie have made everyone stop because he wasn’t feeling up for it that night? No, they wouldn’t. They would have done everything they could to make sure that their audiences were having the time of their lives, and Grohl was going to do the same, even if it meant acting like a complete dork.
Other artists might have mystique, but Grohl ain’t one of them. He was trying to get people to lose their minds at a concert, and even when he talked to the crowd, he just seemed like a genuine rock and roll fan who wanted to turn one of the biggest stadiums in the world into a tiny rock and roll club for a few hours. But the best live bands are the ones that are going to be brilliant without anyone even noticing.
The biggest names in music didn’t have to have a huge setup to be great, and even when listening to The Beatles play on the rooftop in Get Back, they were a fantastic band even without any of the production bells and whistles. And by the time Grohl’s generation took over the world, the biggest names in the industry didn’t have to do much other than play music to get the audience’s attention.
Oasis are one of the best live bands to come out of the 1990s, and the fact that they could just stand there and do absolutely nothing throughout the night is still one of the best power moves any rockstar has ever done. But with Radiohead, there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye every single time they started playing live during the era of OK Computer. Thom Yorke was turning into a rock god before people’s eyes, and Grohl knew he was watching something extraordinary.
The record itself had already knocked him on his ass, but hearing Radiohead play ‘Paranoid Android’ was what really sealed the deal for him, saying, “Of course, as a live band, one of the greatest of all time. Performing a song that was challenging the audience to join them in this crazy revolution. ‘Paranoid Android’ live is not exactly like the record; it’s better because it’s happening. I do believe that record changed the landscape of popular music for years to come.”
And even when the band ended up trading in their guitars for samplers and synthesisers on later records, they never lost their knack for making their live shows a spectacle. Even during their performances in Live from the Basement, you can tell that they’re getting just as much of a kick out of their performance as the audience is, especially when they lock in on a song like ‘15 Step’.
Everyone would normally be looking to see when the next shoe was going to drop, but part of Radiohead’s charm is watching them roll with the punches. Even when songs aren’t going to be perfect, you aren’t going to hear any other band play them that well, and Grohl could only look on in amazement, seeing them trying to pull at the fabric of what traditional rock and roll was supposed to be.
