1/2/2024 0 Comments Material growlAs Grohl’s voice cracked and he started wiping away tears reciting “Times Like These” to start their set, you couldn’t help but empathize with everything running through his head. It was an act of preoccupation as relatable as it was tragic. He darted across the stage all night, swapping instruments like he was trying on clothes: bass with the Pretenders, guitar alongside Paul McCartney, drums with Rush’s Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson, then back to bass with Wolfgang Van Halen. Watching Grohl repeatedly throw himself into the music at the tribute show was like watching someone throw their weight onto a floatation device while learning how to swim. (Fortunately, the studio scrapped it after the two expressed how emotionally overwhelming the process was.) Instead, his grief was immortalized in press cycles and award shows while he and Krist Novoselic were forced to compile a live album commemorating Nirvana’s career. After Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994, Grohl didn’t get to organize a memorial in the singer’s honor or take the time needed to mourn privately. For Grohl, the need to adapt to your job so radically in the wake of tragedy is grimly familiar. It felt like the band was playing from inside a pitch-black well, desperately clawing their way upwards and towards the sunlight outside. Unlike Hawkins’ family, who feel his absence most as a husband and father, the Foo Fighters feel his absence most onstage as a drummer. It was Grohl’s appearances onstage that were the most heartbreaking. The night’s goofier moments, like Brian Johnson and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich playing AC/DC songs with Foo Fighters as the singer from the Darkness wailed, were ridiculous and entertaining, a reminder not to take things too seriously even if you’re some of the most famous names in rock. Watching Hawkins’ cover band Chevy Metal and his side-project the Coattail Riders work through a series of songs, the evening quickly defined itself as the type of event Hawkins himself would've loved to attend. When honoring him with a nearly six-hour-long concert, the band pulled off a heartfelt homage and an entertaining night simultaneously, bringing to mind the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert they were nodding to when planning their own.įoo Fighters called upon Hawkins’ friends, collaborators, and even idols to celebrate his life, throwing a concert that was just as much a memorial as it was a party. Foo Fighters are undeniably one of the biggest rock bands of this century, and Hawkins was their heartbeat. In reality, they can unfurl in a melodramatic, rote, and unfortunately depressing manner. In theory, they’re simple to organize: wrangle together a few people close to the loved one lost and have them perform in their honor.
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