During their one-off show in Geelong on Friday (March 4), Foo Fighters revealed their plans to embark on a full-scale tour of Australian capital cities this November.
Dave Grohl mentioned the tour several times during the Foos’ two-and-a-half hour set, first in a speech building hype for their performance of ‘Shame Shame’ (from last year’s ‘Medicine At Midnight’ album). “You know we’re coming back here in November for a real tour,” he quipped to the crowd, after getting booed for telling them the Foos were about to play a shorter-than-usual set. “We’re just getting warmed up tonight!”
The band have since begun teasing cities and venues for the run on social media, hinting that a formal announcement is imminent. They started by teasing a show for Sydney yesterday morning (March 5), posting a photo of fans lined up at Olympic Park with the caption, “Pulling up to the venue now! Let’s gooooooo!”
The shot appears to be taken out the front of Qudos Bank Arena, though it’s more likely the Foos will play Accor Stadium (which is adjacent to the arena), where they’d held their last two Sydney shows in 2015 and 2018.
Shortly after their tease of a Sydney show, the Foos posted similar photos hinting at shows in Melbourne (with the caption, “Hitting the bar first, want one or two beers?”) and Perth (“Checking the merch stand on the way in! What size do you want?”).
If the pictures do indeed match the venues they’re set to play, the Foos’ Melbourne show will go down at AAMI Park – where they last performed in 2011, having played subsequent shows at Etihad Stadium – and Perth at Optus Stadium. The band are yet to tease any further dates, though it’s worth noting that an Australian tour of theirs hasn’t skipped Brisbane or Adelaide since 1999.
In a five-star review of Friday’s Geelong show, NME wrote: “It’s hard not to feel like we’ve just witnessed an historical event. Mother Nature may have brought the rain but the Foos came in even harder with their thunder.”
The show was dedicated to late Mushroom Group founder Michael Gudinski, who was instrumental in the Foos’ growth in Australia. A photo of Gudinski was adorned on Taylor Hawkins’ kick drum for the duration of the show, while Hawkins himself wore a vintage Mushroom shirt. Ending their set, the band played ‘Everlong’ in Gudinski’s honour, his photo beamed on the screen behind them while a firework display closed out the night.
Grohl also delivered a speech paying tribute to his late friend, saying: “I would like to dedicate this last song to an old friend, who’s not here with us tonight – a person that always brought us over here, took care of us and made us happy – a sweet man, who made everything fun Down Under.
“Coincidentally, we managed to get down here about… Almost exactly a year since his passing. But we would not be the band that we are today, here in Australia, if it wasn’t for the great, late Michael Gudinski. I never understood one word that motherfucker said, man – I swear to god, I couldn’t tell what he was saying. But I do know that he was full of love. So let’s give it back to him.”
The post Foo Fighters tease fully fledged Australian tour for November 2022 appeared first on NME.
