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“The radio doesn’t play songs for me anymore,” says Bob, 54, who is situated in a lawn chair, deciding between a drag from the Marlboro Red in his left hand and the Budweiser can in his right. He chooses the Bud first,
a sensible move given the sun bouncing off the concrete of the endless parking lot he’s camped out in near Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Aug. 13.
Foo Fighters are set to play inside the stadium in five hours, and Bob is with his son, 31-year-old Albert, and a gaggle of his buddies. “I’m the old fart of the group, so maybe there is stuff out there,” Bob says, now puffing his cig. “But 20, 30 years ago you could turn on the radio and hear rock music. Now I just turn on a podcast on the way to work.”
“Radio sucks!” Albert yells from a few feet away, underlining the point. “Give us some rock.”
The duo was in the right place. Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has become a one-man army committed to keeping guitar-driven rock alive. He opened the second song of their set that evening, “The Pretender,” by shouting, “Do you want some rock ‘n’ roll music? I know Philadelphia loves rock ‘n’ roll!” It elicited one of the biggest responses of the night, as the stadium roared with support.
Unfortunately, outside of the Foo Fighters and tour openers Queens of the Stone Age, it seems like nearly every other genre is having an outsized moment that rock can’t match. Country is topping the charts at a historic pace, pop continues to capture the zeitgeist, indie and emo are having Millennial-driven resurgences, and even folk rockers like Noah Kahan and Mumford & Sons are selling out arenas and ball fields. Even buzzy guitar-driven groups like Geese and Idles can prove too experimental and esoteric for fans looking for anthemic rock.
Outside of a handful of other acts still regularly recording (Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Weezer, Muse and Metallica) and legacy groups touring the hits (AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Iron Maiden), the larger cultural footprint of rock, much like hip hop, has waned in recent decades. But you wouldn’t know it by these fans’ enthusiasm.
“Going to this is like going to church for me,” says Linda, a tailgater who declined to share her age. “When I grew up, it was Queen and Meat Loaf on the radio; you’d be singing along to Cheap Trick and The Cars. There’s no guitar bands anymore; there’s no sing-along songs. I just have a few bands I plug into Pandora and end up hearing the same stuff, so I’ve embraced going to see my favorites when they come to town. And who doesn’t love Foo Fighters?”
The sentiment of there being no good rock bands anymore was expressed by several of the fans I spoke to. Jeremy, a 16-year-old attending the show with his parents and cousins who introduced him to the night’s headliner, considers himself tech-savvy but still hasn’t found any current music that evokes the same emotion in him.
“I love Queens of the Stone Age as much as Foo Fighters, and I found them on Spotify mixes,” he says. “But they’re the most modern band, and most alternative rock or hard rock lists I see focus on Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Audioslave and bands like that. It sounds great so I listen to it, but my friends think I’m old-school.”
Jeremy must have felt right at home at the five-and-a-half-hour show, which was started up by Philadelphia natives Mannequin Pussy. Lead singer and guitarist Marisa Dabice blazed through 10 punky tracks, which, given her strong voice and hooky songwriting, surely converted some early arrivals. Queens of the Stone Age then played a hits-fueled hour, with Grohl’s BFF and Queens frontman Josh Homme delivering his signature swagger.
Yet Grohl took it upon himself to be the official ambassador of rock ‘n’ roll, running circles around the stage during the nearly-three hour set, screaming, riffing and soloing away on 30-plus years of Foo Fighters hits. It sounded great in the packed stadium, with tens of thousands of fans singing along to all but the deepest rarities.
A few hours before the show, Beau, 48, was situated in the parking lot with his wife and some other couples, playing cards on a folded table while the car radio blasted John Mellencamp. He asked me if he thought the band would play “Everlong,” his favorite song. I assured him they would (it was the final song of the encore).
“Man, I can’t wait to see it,” he says. “Drink some beers, have a hot dog, spend a summer night with my friends singing along. What could be better?”
