Dave Grohl has taken the stage, positioned himself in front of the microphone, and, before launching into 'All My Life' and 'The Pretender', without any greeting, let out a wild scream. And so he spent two hours and 20 minutes, shredding his throat at the concert that Foo Fighters delivered tonight at Mad Cool, an emotional outpouring that tens of thousands of fans celebrated and shared with arms raised and choruses shouted louder than sung.
It was during the first day of the Madrid festival, which this year celebrates its tenth anniversary with an ambitious lineup and expects to gather 57,000 people daily until Saturday. This Wednesday, Wolf Alice, The War on Drugs, and The Warning also delivered some of the most outstanding performances of the festival's kickoff.
Frustration, revenge, anguish, or anger have been common fuels of rock. Foo Fighters have solidified their music with stories of resistance, overcoming, and personal vindication against problems and the world, but Dave Grohl has always aimed to incorporate a positive message into them. Kurt Cobain, the epitome of 90s skepticism, once said that having hope is for fools. Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer and fearless star, has strived since April 5, 1994, to have hope and to steer clear of toxic feelings. The songs that resonated tonight in a dense 30-degree air were inflamed with passion, but they were not angry songs; no one should waste time looking for any trace of violence in them, let alone the word hatred.
These have been turbulent years for the easygoing guitarist and singer from Seattle. In March 2022, the group's drummer and his close friend Taylor Hawkins died suddenly, with 10 different stimulants found in his body (he dedicated Aurora to him); and in July of that year, his mother, to whom he was very close, passed away. On the other hand, in September 2024, he revealed on social media that he had a daughter from an extramarital relationship, leading to the third cancellation of a Foo Fighters tour in four years, following cancellations due to COVID and the drummer's death.
The result of these tumultuous years has been two excellent albums that have reignited the group's inspiration: the moving But We Are Here (2023) and the raw and volcanic Your Favorite Toy, released three months ago. These two new albums have pulled the group out of a creative slump of over a decade, but in their performance tonight, they overlooked them and focused on reaffirming Foo Fighters as a unit that has been moving forward for over 30 years. In their lengthy performance, the third by the group in Madrid this century, they relentlessly linked songs from their previous 10 albums, a giant rock tornado revolving around the distortion of their three electric guitars, playing riffs like chops, and a drummer who played like Animal from the Muppets.
So Dave Grohl, in a tough personal moment and when his group seemed on the verge of becoming a nostalgia-bound behemoth for their old fans, did what he does best, sing about resistance, overcoming, and personal vindication with a whirlwind of adrenaline capable of lifting a car off the ground. And his fans, old or new, have also received that legacy as an act of vindication: in a world devoid of old structures where reggaeton fills stadiums, many seemed to find in these dizzying Foo Fighters a great rock comeback and guitar riffs as a moral crusade, as a dogma: as something good and necessary. And so they sang: shredding their throats.