Foo Fighters review: Jack Black stuns fans with surprise guest appearance

REVIEW

“It’s not often an earthquake is triggered by a rock band,” Dave Grohl proudly told a bursting-at-the-seams Mt Smart last night.

The Foo Fighters frontman was referring to the “seismic event” the band famously caused when they played in Auckland in 2011. But their efforts last night sure gave it a good go for a repeat.

Grohl uttered the line every local crowd wants to hear - “You were the loudest audience we’ve ever had.” And we lapped it up.

The Foo Fighters perform at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland on Saturday 20 January 2024. Photo / Cameron Pitney

Two hours in and dripping in sweat, Grohl then asked us to scream at the top of our lungs. And if that didn’t do it, actor Jack Black storming on stage in a tie-dye T-shirt singing AC/DC’s Big Balls probably did.

Take that, previous earthquake measure.

The audience’s visceral reaction was one of delight. Black is in Auckland to film the new Minecraft movie along with Jason Momoa and Jennifer Coolidge and has previously toured with the Foos in his own band Tenacious D.

Jack Black made a surprise cameo at the Foo Fighters concert last night at Mt Smart Stadium.

Grohl set the terms of the night early on.

”Do you like rock and roll?” he asked the masses. “I got to test you. Test what kind of rock and roll you like.

”I think I kind of know what type of rock and roll you like.”

The main riff from Metallica’s Enter Sandman gradually rose to a blaring jam everyone embraced instantly.

”We’re going to be here all f****** night, so I got to make sure you like that kind of rock and roll.”

The nods to Grohl’s fellow rockers were aplenty - the “hey ho, let’s go” refrain from The Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop was another cue for the audience to scream along.

Ever the showman, Grohl showed off his connection with Down Under when he performed the instrumental piece, The Ballad of Beaconsfield Miners, in memory of those who died in the 2006 gold mine collapse in Tasmania.

”I wrote this for them,” he opened with. And he did his best to reference almost every concert the band had played in New Zealand over their 28 years.

The weather gods smiled on the East Auckland stadium, unlike the last time the Foos were here in 2018 - or this time last year during the ultimately ill-fated Elton John concert.

Fresh off a run of shows in Australia, the rockers, who formed nearly 30 years ago, are back for the first time without drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in 2022 in Colombia.

Their world tour in late 2022 was cancelled after Hawkins, 50, died in his room at the Four Seasons Casa Medina in Bogota. He had multiple substances in his body at the time of death.

Last night, the crowd gave a standing ovation for replacement Josh Freese - who has played for everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Guns N’ Roses - when Grohl broke his set to introduce him as “the person who made it possible for us to come out here and play tonight”.

He later dedicated a song to Hawkins, Aurora, which they’d written together.

The crowd was a congregation that spanned every living generation. Parents with kids. Boomers on a rocking date night. Gen Z youngsters who would have been barely a twinkle in their parents’ eyes when the band’s first album came out in 1995.

An 8-year-old kid atop his dad’s shoulders held a sign reading “my mum thinks I’m at Nanna’s tonight”. But looking around, Nanna could have joined the sneaky twosome.

We sat in prime seats just to the side of the general admission area. While everyone stood for the first hour, eventually some greyer than others tired and sat.

The 15-time Grammy-winning band released their latest album - their 11th - But Here We Are - in June last year. But it was all the classics that brought out the head-banging - Hero, The Pretender, Learn to Fly. But it wasn’t until the bitter end that the crowd-pumper Everlong came on.

Lord knows how many times the band have played them, but every hit was delivered with sweaty passion. Along with US rockers The Breeders and punk five-piece Kiwi band Dick Move, the band will continue to attempt to recreate seismic events at Christchurch’s Orange Theory Stadium on Wednesday and Wellington’s Sky Stadium next Saturday.