Foo Fighters’ ‘Take Cover’ tour: The story so far

Somewhere between the thunderstorm in Berlin and the mosh-pit rivalry in Lisbon, a pattern emerged on the European leg of Foo Fighters’ ‘Take Cover’ tour.

Not the setlist. Nor the size of the stage (although it has clearly outgrown at least one Scandinavian arena).

It was Dave Grohl himself, on the last night in Lisbon, telling 60,000 people something that anyone who’d been to any of the previous 11 shows already suspected: “This is the most fun we’ve had in a long, long, long, long time.”

He said it in Liverpool too. But it was delivered more explicitly in the Portuguese capital, where the word “fucking” was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

One assumes he will say it again when the tour resumes in Toronto next week, and for the remainder of the eight-date North American run, because if there is one thing 31 years of this band have taught us about Dave Grohl, it’s that the man has never once undersold a concert in his life.

And, rather gloriously, the evidence backs him up.

Having attended night two in Liverpool myself, and sat through lots of fan voice notes recorded in hotel rooms and departure lounges, I’d struggle to disagree.

But a tour this good deserves a proper post-mortem - the triumphs, the running jokes and perhaps, best of all, the man who spent an entire show dressed as a packet of Mentos.

So, here’s the thing with setlists - you win some, you lose some. Especially when you’re following a band with three decades’ worth of material.

And so it proved on this European run. ‘Marigold’ turned up for the first time in 16 years. ‘Wheels’ was dusted off (absent from the set since 2022). There’s a whole acoustic mid-set excursion down a catwalk now, with the aforementioned plus ‘Under You’ as its staples.

Reinventing the wheel? Perhaps not. But enough to keep the ‘regulars’ happy.

As Rebecca Clark, on her 94th and 95th shows in Oslo and Stockholm, put it after nearly a century of gigs: “Sometimes I really feel like when I get there, there’s nothing they can do that can surprise me - and then they do.”

The one sticking point - and it followed the tour like a slightly awkward relative - was the new album. There was precious little of it.

Most shows heard between one and three new songs. The last two, Madrid and Lisbon, none at all - a fact Portuguese fan Tiago Cruz raised with the mild bafflement of someone who genuinely loves the record and can’t work out why the band won’t trust a festival crowd with it.

One theory doing the rounds is that an album built for secret club shows doesn’t necessarily translate to 60,000 people who came for ‘Everlong’.

Maybe. Either way, if you were hoping for ‘Asking For A Friend’, you are not alone, and neither is regular Foos Files contributor Kim Hearn, who has been asking politely since witnessing its sole outing in Monterrey back in November.

On the subject of setlists, the encore divided opinion - namely the presence of ‘The Teacher’ and ‘Exhausted’.

While some warmly welcome ‘The Teacher’ as a genuinely moving tribute to Dave’s mother, others feel a ten-minute meditation on grief is a curious way to restart a stadium after two-and-a-half hours of hits.

As for ‘Exhausted’ - a real connoisseur’s favourite from the self-titled debut - Dave caught out a few of the Liverpool faithful by introducing it as the last song.

Of course, it wasn’t the case - he skipped the traditional “we don’t say goodbye…” routine and launched straight into ‘Everlong’.

Still, the earlier-than-usual parting message was enough to send a small minority of Liverpool night two attendees to a premature exit.

One wonders if they were even at the right show…

If you want a genuinely illuminating cultural survey of Europe, forget Interrail - just ask Foo Fighters fans how early they queued.

In Oslo, turning up at 8am secured a front-row spot with plenty of room to spare, because as German fan Dennis Greubel discovered to his mild astonishment, “people in Norway don’t show up early to queue.”

Vienna operated on a similarly relaxed timetable, with a stealth “golden circle” nobody knew existed until they were already inside it.

Warsaw, by contrast, was closer to a disaster movie, as another friend of the podcast, Maca Chocan, describes - broken ticket scanners, a mystery half-hour delay at the turnstiles, and several hundred people sprinting for their lives once the gates finally opened.

Berlin split the difference by opening every turnstile simultaneously and letting it become, in the words of Lesley O’Mara, “a bit of a free-for-all”.

Somewhere in all this, the British queuing gene - arrive mid-morning, form an orderly line, discuss the weather - starts to look less like national stereotype and more like the only sane, consistent approach.

Speaking of weather, the tour delivered most of it. Liverpool’s first night was a sweatbox. The second was cooler, breezier, and considerably more forgiving on the early birds.

Munich delivered proper stadium sunshine. Vienna produced, by general consensus, the best night of the entire run - 24 degrees and a light breeze - although local fireworks restrictions meant ‘Everlong’ finished without its usual pyrotechnic flourish.

Berlin got the closest thing to genuine jeopardy, when a thunderstorm forced the entire standing section to evacuate mid-changeover and the band spent the first four songs playing through the rain on the assumption the whole thing might be called off at any moment.

It wasn’t, and if anything the sodden, slightly chaotic atmosphere made for one of the more memorable nights of the tour.

For a man performing to crowds the size of a small city most nights, Dave has an unnerving habit of clocking individuals.

During the Vienna finale, he stopped in his tracks to recognise Kim Hearn and her husband Steve, a moment their friend caught on video for posterity.

In Warsaw, he singled out Maca Chocan for her enthusiastic shouting during ‘Monkey Wrench’ (“it sounds like you’re in pain”) before throwing her his wristband at the end of the night.

In Lisbon, on the last date of the leg, he spotted a group of fans in the crowd he’d apparently seen on the local news earlier that day.

He had a wristband delivered to one of them via security before the encore was done.

If you’re planning to attend a Foo Fighters show any time soon, the lesson is clear - assume you are being watched, and behave accordingly.

No account of this tour is complete without Marc Bautista.

A Spanish fan and member of Foo Fighters tribute act Fool Fakers, Marc turned up to the second Liverpool show dressed as a giant packet of Mentos, a ‘Big Me’ tribute so good it’s surely ruined themed concert outfits for everyone else, forever.

Dave spotted him (with a little help from tour photographer Andi K. Taylor), hauled him up during the song, and let him sing half of it in front of 60,000 people.

Marc later admitted the only thing running through his head at the time was: “Keep calm, don’t panic.”

The resulting selfie video - recorded, gloriously, from the stage itself - has been doing laps of Foo Fighters social media ever since.

He wasn’t even the only Mentos-adjacent moment of the tour. Warsaw had actual inflatable Mentos balls launched at the band mid-song, prompting Dave to thank Poland for their “big balls” - a line that will likely follow him for some time.

Genuinely brilliant is the short answer. Ilan Rubin’s guitar swap with Dave has gone from a novelty moment to one of the unquestioned highlights of the set.

The production - bigger stages, bolder lighting rigs, more visual storytelling - is a departure, of sorts, for a band that usually lets the songs do the talking. By most accounts, it’s working.

And running through every single fan recap, from Norway to Portugal, is the same observation - the band look like they’re having fun.

Visible, can’t-fake-it fun. As closing arguments go, Dave Grohl saying it himself on the last night of the tour is about as good as it gets.

• Check out episodes 63-67 of Foos Files: A Foo Fighters Podcast for fan verdicts on the European leg of the ‘Take Cover’ tour.

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