FOO FIGHTERS DELIVER HIT-FILLED SET AT TORONTO'S ROGERS STADIUM
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More than 20 years after the Foo Fighters played what was then their biggest concert at Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre, the Dave Grohl-led rock outfit returned to the city for its first show at Rogers Stadium.
Joined by his bandmates — guitarists Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett, bassist Nate Mendel, newly-hired drummer Ilan Rubin and keyboard player Rami Jaffee — Grohl led the nearly sold-out crowd through three hours of singalongs and catharsis following the death of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022.
After brisk opening sets from Mannequin Pussy and Queens of the Stone Age, the Foos satisfied longtime fans early on by kicking off with a blistering, fast-paced medley of the group’s biggest hits that included The Pretender , My Hero , Learn to Fly and These Days .
“Let me tell you something, we’ve been a band for 31 years now. When we come out to do these shows, we know we got to try and do something from every record,” Grohl said as Foo Fighters launched the North American leg of their tour.
But hitting the road behind their 12th studio album, Your Favorite Toy , Grohl promised “we have something for everyone” on this latest jaunt, which is aptly named the Take Cover Tour.
“We’ll play as long as we can, until they tell us to stop,” the 57-year-old frontman said shortly after the show began. “We’re going to play song after song after song after song … That’s a lot of songs.”
Show was Foos’ first in Toronto since 2018
Starting just after 8 p.m. and ending at the venue’s 11 p.m. curfew with Everlong and a cavalcade of fireworks, he kept his word.
The show was the band’s first in the city since 2018 — a fact that seemed to surprise Grohl.
“That’s some f***ing bulls***,” he quipped from the stage. “I feel like next year, we have to come back and play eight times.”
Foo Fighters opened the night with All My Life and easily segued between chart-topping hits and several deeper cuts. Only one song from Toy — Caught In The Echo — figured into the 26-song setlist.
In the night’s most touching moment, they dedicated Aurora , from 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose , to late drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022.
“We like to do this song, every time we play, for Mr. Taylor Hawkins,” Grohl said introducing the track. “Everybody, let’s make some noise so he can hear us.”
During a four-song acoustic set on a B-Stage that jutted out into the audience, the band dedicated Under You to Hawkins’ son Shane, who was celebrating his 20th birthday.
Grohl also acknowledged Nirvana, the band he gained worldwide fame with in the early ’90s, when he performed Marigold , a song that was originally released as a B-side to 1993’s Heart-Shaped Box .
“We dusted something off that we haven’t done in 20 years … This is a song I wrote when I first joined Nirvana,” Grohl said. “I lived in this little apartment with (late singer) Kurt (Cobain) and there was this couch that I lived on and he would go to sleep early and I would sit and play guitar and try to write songs and I wrote this song as quietly as I could.”
Before they launched into their 30-year-old smash hit Big Me , Grohl jokingly warned the crowd not to pelt him with Mentos in a nod to the band’s iconic music video and its staying power as a piece of pop music culture.
One of the night’s biggest surprises came when Grohl had each band member perform a song associated with one of their previous bands with Jaffee’s One Headlight from the Wallflowers earning the biggest cheers.
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Grohl emotionally thanked crowd
As they have grown from playing clubs like Toronto’s Opera House to headlining the 50,000-seat Rogers Stadium, the Foo Fighters haven’t lost what made them special. They still pair thunderous, guitar-driven rock with the melodic hooks that turned them into one of modern rock’s defining bands.
But there was a deeper measure of appreciation from Grohl this time around. Perhaps it was Hawkins’ death or the upheaval in his personal life after admitting to fathering a child outside his marriage. Maybe it is just the passage of time.
But hearing the crowd enthusiastically singing along to every song for three hours caused Grohl to tap into an emotional openness throughout. He repeatedly asked for the house lights to be turned up so he could see the many faces in the crowd.
Toward the end of the night, he remarked as he was flying into Toronto earlier that day that he could see the stadium from his plane window.
“I saw the gig,” Grohl remarked before introducing Best of You . “I had such an incredibly great moment of gratitude and being so thankful for everything in this life. That we could be here tonight in this f***ing beautiful place. I have a video on my phone. I was like, ‘Oh s*** this place is big.'”
And no matter how big the venues continue to get, somehow the Foo Fighters still manage to create an intimacy and familiarity that continues to endure more than three decades on.
Just don’t wait another eight years to come back, guys.
RATING: **** out of Four
2026-08-05T21:24:18Z
