Photo Credit: Allen Halas
Foo Fighters
“We got too many fuckin’ songs, man” quipped Dave Grohl to the rest of his band, midway through their set on Saturday night at the Harley Homecoming festival in Veterans Park. He wasn’t wrong.
With a capacity crowd on hand at Veterans Park for the second night of the music festival portion of the event, Grohl and co. were the more-than-capable headliners tasked with closing out a bill of notable names. While Friday night’s crowd felt comfortably big, the Saturday night crowd had reached critical mass, with one of the biggest active bands in the world finishing the first of what will be an annual occurrence.
With only a two-hour timeslot, modest by the band’s standards, the Foo Fighters wasted no time to deliver a litany of hits from the course of their nearly three-decade run at the top of alternative rock. In that time, they would go for 20 songs in total, with fairly little banter in between. Opening big with the cathartic blast that is “All My Life,” the Veterans Park crowd were in full voice by the first chorus. At one point, Grohl would mention to the crowd that had never been to a Foo Fighters show before, “tonight, you guys are mine.” Again, he wasn’t wrong.
Just about everything in their two-hour set was a track released as a single, and many of them smash hits. Only two tracks from this year’s But Here We Are made it into the show; singles “Rescue” and “Under You” would appear, and only in the front half of the band’s barrage of music. Much like Green Day the night before, the reality was that their catalog was too deep to bring much of the new album into the fold. There was only one fairly obscure choice, with “La Dee Da” from 2017’s Concrete And Gold, but even that wasn’t going to deter the crowd, which looked massive when shown from above on the screens at the stage, from bouncing along with every song.
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They would also address the elephant in the room, or park, as well. Saturday’s show was the band’s first Milwaukee appearance since the passing of drummer Taylor Hawkins, who had been integral to the band for decades. New drummer Josh Freese was given plenty of time to shine with some impressive solos, though. Grohl provided a crash course on his previous credentials via a medley of bands Freese had been in, including playing part of “Whip It” by Devo and “March of the Pigs” by Nine Inch Nails. That culminated in bringing a young fan on stage to sing Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet,” which Freese played on the studio session for. It could have went better, and Grohl acknowledged that as they led the young fan offstage before playing “My Hero,” which once again ignited thousands of fans to sing their hearts out.
The band would wind down the back half of an already loaded set with some mellower notes, as Grohl noted that “if you play for this long, sometimes you gotta break it all down” leading into 2021’s “Shame Shame.” There was also an audible called onstage, as Grohl opted to do a solo version of “Big Me,” while security resolved an issue in the crowd. After a tribute to the late Hawkins with “Aurora,” things wound back up quickly with the screaming introduction to “Best Of You” followed by “Everlong” to finish out the night. Whether the tempo was turned up or down, the Foo Fighters had all of Veterans Park in the palm of their hands on Saturday, and it showed.
Prior to the Foo Fighters set on Saturday night, representatives from Harley-Davidson announced that the 2024 edition of the Harley Homecoming would take place from July 25-28, making the music festival an annual occurrence. The headlining set on Saturday, however, is going to make for a tough act to follow for whoever is tapped to do the honors in 2024. Prior to closing the show, Grohl noted that they plan to be back in Milwaukee, but did not specify a date. Based on their performance at Veterans Park, though, they’ll need a stadium at minimum to meet their demand.
