The Best! The Best! The Best!
There's a reason Friday night's hottest-ticket-ever Foo Fighters Halloween show at the Ryman was such a big fucking deal: Not many bands can do what Dave Grohl & Co. did. Which is to keep a crowd on its feet, enraptured by the visceral power of pure rock 'n' roll for what felt like a glorious three-hour fever dream. Powerhouse rock bands with decades-spanning catalogs of radio megahits, courthouse-steps-style drum risers, corpse paint, cowbell and the audacity to follow a Queen cover with a Van Halen cover are going extinct.
With that — the elements of a very '70s show — Foo Fighters made a case for classic arena rock in the comparatively intimate confines of the Ryman, resulting in hands down the most thrilling gig we've ever seen at the Mother Church. Who wouldn't want to see that?
Just after 11 p.m., following a screening of the Nashville episode of Grohl's Sonic Highways HBO docuseries, the band took the stage sporting King Diamond-style death-metal corpse paint. They opened with "All My Life," charging at the heavily costumed crowd like bulls being let out of the gates at Pamplona. The full-cranked sonic and cardiovascular pummeling continued into a head-bang-inducing "I'll Stick Around" — and over a ballad-bereft 25-song marathon set of anthems, fist-pumpers and classic-rock covers, it didn't let up until 2 a.m.
Many times over the course of those 180 minutes — like on a Wembley Stadium-worthy "My Hero" sing-along — the on-every-note-hanging crowd matched the band's triple-digit-decibel volume levels. The audience's appropriately haunting, ghoulish en-masse humming of the wordless "whoa-oh-ohs" that Grohl didn't even have to cue during "Best of You" were gut-rumbling, hair-raising, something you'd imagine hearing at a South American World Cup match. Mass catharsis rattled through the tabernacle when, after milking an extended jam on the "Monkey Wrench" bridge, the band stopped to the let the crowd shout the "one last thing before I quit ..." part.
More than any other modern-rock god, Grohl's built a good-guy grunge-rocker brand of aging gracefully by staying connected to his trad-rock-loving roots. He can still go punk without pretension ("White Limo"), and he balances his (increasingly) earnest tendencies with enough irony-free affable humor to make a dedicated mid-set cover of Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure" feel as much like a life-or-death-meaningful rallying call as it does a fun, communal karaoke romp.
"The version of this I played at Thomas Jefferson High School in ninth grade wasn't good enough to win the battle of the bands," Grohl said during the intro. "Now I get to play it at the Ryman for you motherfuckers."
The Grohl-directed Sonic Highways episode that screened prior to the performance was, of course, about Nashville. "Everybody now thinks Nashville is the coolest city in America," Grohl narrated, but the episode was light on present-day rock hipness and stuck mostly to the city's country roots. Of course, Nashville is probably one of a handful of cities in America where a crowd gathered for a rock show will heartily applaud anything to do with country music. Talking-head appearances from Dolly, Willie and Tony Joe White were met with hoots and hollers, as was Dan Auerbach. Watching people cheer pictures of the Ryman while actually seated in the Ryman meshed perfectly with the very sincere attitude of the show.
The episode was primarily an overview of the city and its industry; the intensely affable Zac Brown was prominently featured, as was Foo Fighters recording at Brown's Southern Ground Studios. It's doubtful many people in the crowd learned anything new about Nashville through this episode, but it was a delight to hear Dolly Parton call early clean-cut Willie Nelson a dork, and to hear producer Tony Brown declare himself over every girl's butt being called a "sugar shaker" in today's bro-country climate.
While Zac Brown wore a top hat, suit and corpse paint when he joined the band on stage later, many bearded, stocking-cap-and-snowboarding-garb-sporting bros in the crowd had, by some uncanny coincidence, inadvertently dressed as Zac Brown for Halloween. Spooky.
White and Brown both made guest appearances onstage with the Fighters of Foo. While the latter, a show-stopping shred-fest with Brown (who does a killer Ozzy) on Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," was the hardest rocking, the former — a loose, chugging blues jam with White on his twangy talker "Polk Salad Annie" — was a little more interesting, and much more country.
Ironically, this moment — when, after hours of turnt-up, balls-out rocking, the band had to restrain itself and find a groove — was the only one that was somewhat lost on the crowd; the only moment where the band entertained themselves and each other more than the audience, revealing a real rawness you probably wouldn't see in a stadium. Taylor Hawkins' wide grin while the rest of the band divided its focus between maintaining eye contact and watching their fret boards was priceless, and Tony Joe White looking like a fish out of water on the Ryman stage reinforced the Halloween vibe. This was Music City and the Mother Church filtered through the lenses of some rock 'n' roll interlopers from a parallel dimension, which is more apropos to the story of Nashville than Grohl & Co could have possibly realized.
We mean it when we say Foo Fighters made Ryman history Friday. Those who managed to make it into the building for this show will never forget it. Neither will those who didn't — for entirely different reasons.
Up-close-and-personal quality time spent in the clutches of such rousing rock 'n' roll transcendence and masterfully committed showmanship was easily worth Foo Fighters' $20 ticket prices for this show. And as we found out in the days preceding the show, it was worth hundreds more to many Foo superfans in Middle Tennessee and beyond who purchased tickets on the secondary market. This despite a well-publicized "paperless" Ticketmaster policy that made entry to the venue contingent upon attendees presenting the purchasing credit card along with a photo ID.
"I just hope that everybody who got a ticket could come in and see the band tonight," Grohl said near the set's end.
Didn't happen.
The band wasn't fucking around when it came to paperless ticketing. As a result, many disappointed fans holding (ultimately worthless) high-dollar stubs were turned away at the door.
One Ryman ticket-taker told us staff was instructed to send irate fans — of whom we're told there were many — to the box office. A box office employee then told us that they were not able to accommodate those people and that those seats would remain unsold, though it does seem some nosebleed ticketholders (if there is such a thing at the Ryman) did score an upgrade.
"I'd like to take this time to thank the scalpers, I went from obstructed view to eighth row," we overheard one drunken concertgoer announce to no one in particular before show time. And we had no problem initiating our own DIY upgrade and migrating to second-row seats in the center balcony — right behind Nashville stars and lovey-dovey real-life couple Sam Palladio and Chaley Rose, who were way into the show, and each other — with plenty of room to stretch out. Though the hall was packed for the show, it wasn't packed to capacity. Considering how badly people wanted inside to see this show, and how emotional it got, there's something wrong with that.
Here's the problem: Given the predictable yawning chasm between ticket supply and demand, this show shouldn't have been sold to the general public through Ticketmaster like any ol' general rock concert, giving fans a realistic expectation of scoring tickets. This was a pre-album-cycle promotional tour. One industry vet noted how, despite all the demand, they were sure running into a lot of their friends. We ran into a lot of people we knew too. And we talked to others in the crowd who won tickets via radio giveaways and the like. The will-call line stretched halfway down the block.
The band had only good intentions by giving the general public a shot at buying tickets online. But online ticketing is not scalper- or broker-proof — at least not in a way that protects more eager consumers and saves the Ryman what was probably a customer-service headache beyond their control.
Before a show-closing "Everlong" (and what a tune to go out on!) Grohl promised the band will return to Nashville for a big ol' come-one-come-all rock show.
Ticket snafus aside, we're sure as shit not complaining. The show was awesome, and holy hell, do we feel like lucky fucks for having seen it. We'd personally like to thank the fan whom Grohl credited with requesting a performance of "For All the Cows," which briefly derailed then extended into comic-routine territory when Hawkins improvised an ill-placed, offbeat cowbell hit. We also dug screaming along to "Weenie Beenie" for old times' sake and hearing "Hey, Johnny Park!" Totally didn't expect that. Wow. For us early 30-somethings, the still-active, seminal bands of our youth that we still actively like generally aren't superstars. As "Monkey Wrench" ended with a drum solo that led into "Hey, Johnny Park!" it dawned on us: This might be as close as we'll ever get to knowing how our parents feel at a Rolling Stones gig.
With that in mind, our money's on Foo Fighters as a likely 2015 Bonnaroo headliner — assuming that Music City return Grohl promised doesn't come along sooner.
Email thespin@nashvillescene.com.
