It all begins with a dry-erase whiteboard. That’s how Foo Fighters begin the process of turning their vast catalog into three hours of rock mayhem and celebration.

“On one side you’ve got the songs that everybody knows and everybody sings along to — at this point, there’s maybe 16 or 17 of those,” Dave Grohl said via a video call from the road, using his hands to mime the process of building the set list from scratch.

“Then next to those, you put some fan favorites that maybe the casual fan might’ve heard before. And then you get into the super deep cuts that only the super Foo Fighters nerds will love.”

The big-tent ethos of Foos fandom was evident on this late-summer evening: Packs of rowdy teenagers ambled past Gen X dads in wraparound sunglasses, heavily tattooed tailgaters and 30-something couples sipping date-night cocktails. A shirtless man with a long white beard gyrated in a Santa hat while a young mother gently bounced the baby strapped to her chest, its small seashell ears clamped in protective headphones. This is what it looks like for one of the few bands that rose to alt-rock stardom in the ’90s and has endured for decades.

Accordingly, the night didn’t skimp on the band’s anthemic MTV-era hits, while also including more than one nod to their beloved longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins, who passed away in 2022. There were several cuts from their most recent album, the shredding and raucous “Your Favorite Toy,” and even a cherished rarity that originated in Grohl’s time with Nirvana, the world-conquering band he joined at 21 — he’s 57 now — as a drummer and played in until its frontman Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. (One number was cut for time from the encore: “Exhausted,” a promotional single from Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut.)

“You want to pace things so that you don’t lose engagement with the audience,” Grohl said. “At the same time, we have a lot of songs — we’re trying to squeeze 31 years into three hours.”

Here’s how the evening unfolded from the hard charging opener to the pyrotechnic finale, with commentary offered by a voluble, if gravel-voiced, Grohl the following day.

The First Song Is a No-Brainer

‘ALL MY LIFE’

“I really do love opening with ‘All My Life.’ We’ve done it for years. And I remember as we were writing the set list, I thought, Why waste that moment? We know what happens when I start going. It’s like ‘Jaws’ — the shark is coming. And so I’m like, let’s just blast that [expletive] right out of the gate. I don’t know if we have another song that creates that specific moment. And that’s the craziest feeling. It’s like a three-hour sprint. You’re just like, ‘OK, ready? Go.’ And it’s hard to really prepare for it. The only way to really light that fuse is that song.”

Making a Connection

‘THE PRETENDER’

“If you ever feel alone onstage, just lock eyes with one person in the audience, and it really hits you that this is a shared experience. Every now and then you’ll have a naked Santa Claus, you’ll have someone in some ridiculous costume, and that’s great. I’m running from side to side on that stage every night. You should see my Oura ring. Last night, for Activity, it said 26,000 steps. I’m running so hard, and I find myself with my eyes closed because I’m just punching. And if I’ve had my eyes closed for more than a verse and a chorus, I tell myself, ‘Open up your eyes. Look at the people. Just be present and be here. Lock eyes with someone in the front row and then snap out of it.’ I’m not there just for me. This is everybody’s.”

Audience Participation Is Key

‘MY HERO’

“I am of the school of Queen at Live Aid. At that point in their career, they weren’t the coolest or biggest band in the world anymore, they had other bands at their heels. But people still talk about that performance. Freddie Mercury was the greatest frontman of all time, he knew how to capture the audience in those moments. And the way that he did that was to join everyone together in chorus after chorus after chorus after chorus after chorus. So that’s my main ambition or intention when we play a stadium. We still play like we’re in that little club, but I want to get 50,000 people singing ‘My Hero,’ I want to get 50,000 people singing ‘Best of You.’ And I want to do that from the minute we hit the stage to when we walk off.”

A Nod to Nirvana,
Via an Old B-side

‘MARIGOLD’

“A lot of our acoustic songs, they can be kind of morose and dark. And it’s like, I don’t want to lose the Van Halen in this equation. Then I heard our live recording of ‘Marigold’ for the first time in 20 years. I hadn’t listened to that record in so long. And I love the tempo, I love the energy of it. But I do also love that it was sort of the precursor to this band — these songs that I was writing and recording in my basement or when I was living with Kurt [Cobain] in that little apartment in Olympia. To me, it represents the beginning of this band.”

Introducing the Band, with a Twist

‘ONE HEADLIGHT’

“There needs to be a little levity. So I thought this time around that it would be fun, almost like a potluck dinner, if everybody brings something to the party from a band they were in before. Chris [Shiflett, the guitarist] has been in multiple bands, and he picked No Use for a Name. Nate [Mendel, the bassist], of course, has Sunny Day Real Estate. The craziest one is Rami [Jaffee, the keyboardist]. That Wallflowers song, ‘One Headlight’? I mean, it’s a great song. But I always thought, ‘Wow, I wonder if there’s any sort of crossover with our audience.’ Oh my God. People go bonkers. And for Pat, obviously, it’s the Germs.

With Ilan [Rubin, the band’s new drummer], he didn’t necessarily think anything he had done would work. I think he’s the best rock drummer in the world. I truly do. He’s just so effortlessly powerful, his swing and his feel. But he’s also a shredding guitar player. And so I was like, “You should do a guitar solo, and I’ll jump on the drums.”

A Primal Scream

‘MONKEY WRENCH’

“I don’t lose my voice. It just gets more Motörhead. It’s funny, a long time ago I went to my ear, nose and throat guy and he sent a camera down there, and I was so afraid that he was going to tell me that it was just string cheese, that there’s barnacles and things in there from the ’90s. And afterward he said, ‘Wow, it looks great.’

I like sounding raw. I love giving it everything I have until it looks like the veins in my neck are going to explode because those are the singers that I grew up idolizing. It’s all of my punk rock heroes, all of the hard-core days, all of the heavy bands from the ’70s and ’80s. I don’t know what I would do if I had a great voice. I don’t know if I’d like it as much. There’s something cathartic about the primal scream where you’re out there just blasting as hard as you can.”

A Moment to Honor Taylor Hawkins

‘AURORA’

“We’ve kind of made a pact with ourselves that every night we’ll play ‘Aurora’ for Taylor. And the song ‘Under You,’ that’s about Taylor, so that’s for him, too. That one’s hard to get through without breaking down sometimes. But ‘Aurora’ is one of those songs that we used to love playing every night. And it was a beautiful moment for Taylor to shine. He really liked that song a lot. It was actually the first one that we all wrote together, me and Taylor and Nate in Virginia in my basement. So that’s a special song.”

End with a Bang
(City Ordinances Permitting)

‘EVERLONG’

“There are not always fireworks, and I don’t always know if we’re going to have them. So when we get to that last chorus and they go up, I’m just as surprised as everybody else. That’s kind of nice. ‘Everlong’ is our quintessential finale — not only because people know it, but because the lyrics fits so perfectly at the end of a great show: ‘If everything could ever feel this real forever / If anything could ever be this good again.’ So yeah, it just works. I actually asked Paul McCartney once, ages ago, I said, ‘How do you pick which song to end the show with?” And he goes, ‘Well, we have this song called ‘The End.’ I was like, ‘Oh, duh.’”