“I’m about two years too late,” starts Dave Grohl. “Traffic was a bitch.”
Kicking off with ‘Times Like These’, Dave dedicates the track to Florence + the Machine, who covered the track when they stepped in for the Foo Fighters in 2015. That’s those Nicest Guy In Rock credentials confirmed, then, with a side helping of humble for good measure. Foo Fighters know what tonight means, and they’ve been waiting a long time for it to happen, but there’s not a whole bunch of making up for lost time.
They promise they can play all night – and we definitely believe them. Glastonbury is one of the few festivals they haven’t headlined, and instead of bells, whistles and greatest hits, you can almost smell the petrol from the garage. There are rarities for the die hards and plenty of bangers for the rest, but there’s no urgency. Foo Fighters take their time.
The brutality of ‘Monkey Wrench’ and the beauty of ‘Best Of You’ are drawn out so far, they lose some their impact. Sure, with a legacy like theirs, Foo Fighters are never really going to be less than good, but tonight could, and should, have been so much more. Maybe all that traffic is why they never hit a higher gear.
Foo Fighters played:
Times Like These
All My Life
Learn to Fly
Something From Nothing
The Pretender
Cat Scratch Fever / Another One Bites the Dust / Blitzkrieg Bop
Cold Day in the Sun
Congregation
Walk
These Days
My Hero
Wheels
Run
This Is a Call
Arlandria
Monkey Wrench
Best of You
Skin and Bones
Under Pressure
Everlong