FOO FIGHTERS’ DAVE GROHL On Touring During Pandemic: ‘The Wheels Could Fall Off At Any Moment’
FOO FIGHTERS frontman Dave Grohl spoke to NME about how he and his bandmates have been doing their best to keep both themselves and their fans safe while continuing to play headlining concerts and make festival appearances — including Chicago’s Lollapa…
FOO FIGHTERS frontman Dave Grohl spoke to NME about how he and his bandmates have been doing their best to keep both themselves and their fans safe while continuing to play headlining concerts and make festival appearances — including Chicago's Lollapalooza and New York's Madison Square Garden — all over the country.
"For the two and a half hours onstage, it feels amazing," Grohl said. "It's the other hours of the day that pose a bit of a challenge because of all the new requirements and restrictions and guidelines. You have to be really careful out there. When you're traveling with a crew of 60 people from state to state and venue to venue, you try your best to stay within your band bubble because the wheels could fall off at any moment. You wake up every day and cross your fingers and hope that we make it to the stage that day."
Regarding how the FOO FIGHTERS' current U.S. tour has been going, Grohl said: "We were fortunate to complete this last two-week run — but, you know, we played a venue in Albuquerque [the 15,000-capacity Isleta Amphitheater] where it was the first time they'd had a show there in 688 days. And you could feel it in the audience. You could hear it when they sang along. You could see it when they danced. It's been a town-to-town celebration of the return of live music everywhere we go — opening new venues, reopening venues that had shut down. And you could see that people have been starved of live performance — as have we. We hit the stage like we haven't hit the stage for two years."
As previously reported, fans attending FOO FIGHTERS' concerts in Alaska this week will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive a negative test result 48 hours prior to the show.
On Friday (August 13), Live Nation Entertainment, one of the country's largest concert and ticketing companies, announced that it will require all artists and concertgoers to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test starting in early October.
Live Nation's announcement came one day after AEG Presents said that it will be requiring proof of vaccination for entry into its owned and operated clubs, theaters and festivals. The decision was made on the heels of the dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases as the delta variant spreads throughout the United States.
Several hard rock and heavy metal artists have canceled shows or whole tours as the concert industry is rethinking its approach to live shows while the delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading nationwide.
A number of venues around the country have already instituted policies requiring proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to attend shows.
FOO FIGHTERS played a sold-out show on June 20 at the Madison Square Garden in New York City. To warm up for the MSG gig, FOO FIGHTERS performed five days earlier at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, California. Both venues required ticket buyers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend.
FOO FIGHTERS are continuing to promote their latest album, "Medicine At Midnight", which landed at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart with first-week sales of 64,000 copies in the U.S.