The Foo Fighters brought the rock back to New York City mightily with its June 20 concert at Madison Square Garden. Marking the first concert in the arena since March 2020, it followed the Foos’ much smaller warmup show at the Canyon Club outside of Los Angeles on June 15.
For the MSG bow, the band brought out one major surprise: comedian Dave Chappelle, who joined the Foos to sing a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep” (watch the performance below).
It wasn’t the only cover of the night. Earlier, drummer Taylor Hawkins swapped places with frontman Dave Grohl for a rendition of Queen’s “Somebody to Love.”
“We’ve been waiting for this day for over a year,” Grohl said in a statement announcing the show last week. “And Madison Square Garden is going to feel that hard. New York, get ready for a long ass night of screaming our heads off together to 26 years of Foos.”
That not-so-round number is a reminder that the Foos announced a 26th-anniversary-that-was-supposed-to-be-25th-anniversary tour on June 1. At that point, the tour kickoff was scheduled for a far-distant July 28 in Cincinnati July 28, before this fresh news moved its commencement by more than a month. Only six amphitheater dates were initially announced for that tour, although Foo Fighters are also booked for the upcoming Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Bottlerock festivals.
Grohl has hardly been absent from the media in recent months, even before live dates entered the picture. Foo Fighters’ delayed “Medicine at Midnight” album was released in June, and he’s subsequently been the star and producer of the Paramount Plus show “From Cradle to Stage,” announced a memoir, “The Storyteller,” and released a pandemic-themed single in collaboration with Mick Jagger.
The June 20 concert was dedicated to the band’s longtime stage manager, Andy Pollard, who died on June 18.