“It’s going to be a long, long night,” promised Dave Grohl at the start of the Foo Fighters show Monday at the Verdun Auditorium. Promise kept and yet, no one would have wished that this blessed moment of rock, as well say this blessed moment of life, would not end.
” I’m just waiting to be rescued, bring me back to life », sings Dave Grohl in Rescuedthe highlight of the Foo Fighters’ latest album, But Here We Are. Monday evening, it was as if the Verdun Auditorium spoke through the voice of the grunge icon and demanded to be taken back to its old rock life, that of Grohl’s first visit to the shed south-west of Montreal, in November 1993, when he officiated behind the cymbals for Nirvana.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, THE PRESS
Less than 4,000 lucky men and women were part of the crowd on Monday for this historic concert.
Bring the Verdun Auditorium back to life, where some of the most important works of metal and alternative rock were written in smoke, sweat and decibels? We were 3763 Monday evening to want to contribute to this resurrection.
“I haven’t been here in a while,” Grohl told the crowd after the third song (Learn to Fly), remembering the Foo’s last visit, in 2003, to the arena where many forties and fifties had also not set foot for a long time, except to accompany their brats, on Saturday morning , too soon, for hockey practice.
Resurrection. The word may not quite describe the thrust of the current Foo Fighters tour, although there is certainly something special about this first tour since the tragic death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. ‘a new life. Or, at least, the desire, in each of the survivors, to honor the disappearance of the most spirited of the members of their group by tearing from each of their minutes spent on stage all that they can contain of jubilation and intensity.
Dave Grohl has never been one to retreat to the locker room by allowing his fans to doubt his devotion, the 50-year-old belonging to the Springsteen school of performers who leave everything on stage, and more. But on Monday, the 54-year-old singer had obviously found another reserve of energy under all the countless ones he usually has.
To be lucky
Immoderate, Dave Grohl is also a musician with a keen sense of rock history, and he has often spoken in interviews of his admiration for the thrash metal formation of Jonquière Voivod. An admiration he reiterated on Monday by calling Voivod “one of his favorite bands of all time” and dedicating to drummer Michel “Away” Langevin a particularly poignant version of My Hero (nothing less). The eyes of no metalheads remained dry and Michel Langevin, seated in the bleachers near the stage, had on his face the irresistible smile of an eternal kid. ” It’s good to see you, Michael. »
In fact, it’s everyone who, on stage and in the crowd, had that incredulous smile on their lips for great occasions. “You’re fuckin’ lucky, it’s going to be sick”, announced at the start of the evening Raphaëlle Chouinard, singer and guitarist of the Shirleys, a Montreal trio which has proven that wonderful things await it, but which still did not seem to coming back from being invited by the Foo – drummer Lisandre Bourdages’ banana was visible all the way back.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, THE PRESS
Raphaelle Chouinard
It was less hot in the Verdun Auditorium than on the evening of the visit of Rage Against the Machine in 1996, the air conditioning now running at full speed. The price of beer was much higher. But it is well known: the ghosts that inhabit a place are first and foremost the manifestation of what our memory wishes to project there. And on Monday, at the Verdun Auditorium, 3,763 of us believed in this great idea: rock is as much about music as it is about memories and shared moments. The two songs offered by Grohl with his 17-year-old daughter Violet were just one of the many proofs of this.
Nobody knows better than the six members of the Foo Fighters how lucky and privileged it is to be on stage every night. Nearly 30 years after its founding, the group now looks like a battalion of rock survivors, guitarist Chris Shiflett having played in No Use for a Name, bassist Nate Mendel with Sunny Day Real Estate and keyboardist Rami Jaffee with the Wallflowers.
Seeing Dave Grohl and Pat Smear manhandle their six-string, nose to nose, three decades after the death of their friend Kurt Cobain, should never cease to thrill us.
Josh Freese, the rookie behind the drums, has meanwhile played with too many bands (Guns N’ Roses, A Perfect Circle, The Vandals) to list them all, but earned a bit of Whip It, Devo’s giga tube, another band he was part of. There followed a brief passage from Haven’t Met You Yetbecause yes, it’s also Freese who plays the drums on this hit by Michael Bublé.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, THE PRESS
What can we say about Dave Grohl’s energy, except that it is still at its peak? In the background is drummer Josh Freese.
Come to think of it, the Foo Fighters had perhaps chosen the Verdun Auditorium less out of nostalgia than to remind us that all those we have lost will live on in us as long as we tell their stories, which music lovers of a certain age have all done in recent weeks by regaling their children (more or less consenting) with the story of their most beautiful evenings in the arena where all the greats of deafening music have passed.
“Over the years, I have made many very good friends in Montreal,” recalled Dave Grohl at the end of the race, before singing auroraTaylor Hawkins’ favorite song, which he dedicated to her every night during this tour, and which he also dedicated Monday to his love from another era, the legendary Montreal musician Melissa Auf der Maur.
Monday evening at the Verdun Auditorium, all our friends were present. Even those who are no longer with us.