The band’s high-energy B.C. Place performance featured a set list spanning 1995 to 2026, delivered over three hours of non-stop showmanship.
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The window-rattling, spectacular jet-engine roar of sound heard outside B.C. Place Sunday night carried a message from the stadium stage: the Foo Fighters were back in Vancouver.
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And they were not here to be subtle or rest on their laurels. No, this final Canadian stop on the Take Cover Tour was a decade-spanning rock ‘n’ roll marathon for the ages.
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Queens of the Stone Age, who played a full eleven-song set immediately before the main show, set a high bar for the night. While this band makes perfect sense as an opener — there’s a long-standing relationship here with Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, whose drumming features on several Queens of the Stone Age albums — it was also a real flex.
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Very few acts could follow up something this big, loud and brash and not risk being overshadowed. When you’re the Foo Fighters, though, that’s not a concern.
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Sun Spots
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Queens of the Stone Age lead singer and guitarist Josh Homme punctuated the hard-driving music with philosophical, defiant comments to challenge and rile up the crowd, telling the audience to “go nuts tonight,” leave behind everything else for a couple hours and be here together: Sing, dance, party and be present like it’s the end of the world.
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Then, the stage was suddenly plunged into darkness and Dave Grohl’s iconic rasping scream filled B.C. Place.
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From the first bars of All My Life, tens of thousands of people were on their feet, invigorated by the high-energy guitar solos and crowd-pleasing chorus of the Grammy-winning song.
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After the first few songs, Grohl paused for a quick check-in.
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“Do you want rock ‘n’ roll?” he asked. The answer came as a roar of approval from the audience.
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“Good,” Grohl said, with a showman’s grin. “‘Cause that’s our specialty.”
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This was a truly multi-generational audience, from the old-schoolers who’ve been following the band since its first shows to new listeners who weren’t yet born when the Foo Fighters’ debut album was released in 1995.
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That could be a tough needle to thread: How do you deliver a satisfying show for the fans who propelled you to fame, while also inviting those fans’ kids to fall in love with the Foo Fighters in their own right and not just hear it as ‘dad music’?
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Rather than falling back on just the classics and long-beloved hits, Sunday night’s set list covered old and new Foo Fighters tracks alike, from This Is A Call (the first song off the band’s first record) to songs like Window, released this year.
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“We got three hours to play 30 years of music,” Grohl said, adding a bit of local insight by pointing out that this would be “about four times longer than we played at the Commodore Ballroom in 1995.”
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Stadium tours come with near-infinite potential for flamboyant stagecraft — lights, smoke, lasers — and the Foo Fighters sure did deliver on the fun flashy effects. However, some of the best moments of the performance came when they dialed it back, got as close to the audience as the stage allowed and went acoustic.
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Grohl’s easy storytelling about writing songs like Marigold on the living room couch in the house he shared with Kurt Cobain, and the problems he used to have with people throwing Mentos at him every time he performed Big Me — “don’t even start,” he warned any would-be candy-flingers in the pit — made this an intimate mid-show set.
