The five-and-a-half-hour, three-band odyssey that was the Foo Fighters’ “Take Cover Tour” stop at Lincoln Financial Field on Thursday started with a bang.
It came courtesy of a hellacious opening set by Mannequin Pussy for what was the Dave Grohl-led band’s first show in Philadelphia in 15 years.
The Philly punk rock-plus band earned a position of prominence in this review with an absolutely ripping performance that Foo fans who didn’t arrive at the sports complex by 5:30 p.m. on a weekday afternoon should be kicking themselves for missing.
I’m being effusive about Mannequin Pussy not simply to cheer on one of the best bands to emerge from the Philly music scene in the last decade. The Marisa “Missy” Dabice-led quintet did make the most of their biggest hometown show ever.
Nor is the cheerleading an inappropriate response, especially after the band performed in the home of its favorite football team all dressed in green and ending its action-packed set by leading the crowd in “Fly, Eagles, Fly” and an “E-A-G-L-E-S” chant before leaving the stage flapping their arms as if they were wings.
In 30 minutes, in a less than half full Linc, Mannequin Pussy found time to emphatically deliver seven songs from their top notch 2024 LP I Got Heaven, plus career highlights like “Drunk II,” “Control,” and “Romantic.” They also paid tribute to stage hands and support staff at the Linc while sharing several Go Birds! exclamations along with less friendly words for Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.
With a take-no-prisoners attitude driven by bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford and drummer Kaleen Reading, Mannequin Pussy repeatedly displayed a knack for constructing compact songs that — much like a band that Grohl used to play drums with called Nirvana — move from passages of real beauty to explosions of fury.
I’m making a point of Mannequin Pussy’s concise, impactful approach because it contrasted so sharply with the Foo Fighters’ sprawling headlining set, which stretched over three hours.
In between, Josh Homme’s desert rock band Queens of the Stone Age was also excellent in an hourlong set. The band lived up to its stoner rock rep while riding a slinky, sometimes downright sexy groove, particularly on “Make It Witchu.”
It was impressively locked in, though Homme — which rhymes with “mommy” — sounded a little woozy at times. It was hard to tell if he was kidding when he quipped: “Wow, it was the wrong day to take mushroom before the show.”
The Foo Fighters hit the stage a few minutes after 8 p.m. Grohl trotted down the runway that extended onto the field of the stadium, by then filled with 60,000-plus fans of the band who first performed in Philadelphia at the Trocadero in 1995. They last played South Philly at what was then the Wells Fargo Center, in 2011.
Since then, there were several Foo shows across the river in Camden at the amphitheater now known as the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion. A scheduled 2022 show at the Linc was canceled after the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins earlier that year.
The Foos’ return features new drummer Ilan Rubin, who formerly pounded the skins for Nine Inch Nails. Earlier this year, Rubin replaced Josh Freese, who had replaced Hawkins in 2023.
On the “Take Cover Tour,” which kicked off in Mexico in January and runs through March, the Foos are exerting themselves as one of the world’s biggest bands, playing stadiums all over the globe.
Grohl — who sang and played guitar, except for one brief stint in which he switched places with Rubin and got behind the drum kit — repeatedly mentioned the Linc was the largest venue the band has played in Philadelphia. He also name-checked the Electric Factory, where the band performed three times in the late 1990s and early ’00s.
The stature of the band was also expressed by the length of the show.
Playing for three hours means you’ve attained epic status. Bruce Springsteen has done it for decades. It comes naturally to jam bands like Phish, whose identity is built around extended improvisation. And Taylor Swift also crossed the threshold with her career-spanning “Eras Tour.”
The marathon set gave the Foos — that also includes guitarists Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett, bassist Nate Mendel, and keyboard player Rami Jaffee — time to visit all its own eras.
That meant reaching back to the 1995 self-titled release on which Grohl played all the instruments, which is still the band’s best album. Of the two songs from that record, “This Is the Call,” was included in extended version. The other, “Big Me,” was part of a acoustic set and brimmed with a welcome melodic sweetness and light.
The stripped-down set also included a breezy “Wheels” and “Marigold,” a rarity that Grohl put out on a cassette-only release in 1992 using the band name Late! And when he briefly dismissed the band to do a solo, “Under You,” from the band’s 2023 album, But Here We Are, Grohl delivered a not-on-the-set-list surprise.
It was a Philly special: a shortened version of New Hope duo Ween’s “Freedom of ’76,” a song that The Inquirer recently named one of the most iconic Philadelphia songs of all time. Ween FTW!
In April, the Foos released its 12th album, Your Favorite Toy, a bracing, disciplined record that benefits from brevity, with its 10 songs clocking in under 33 minutes.
For whatever reason, only one of those songs — the hard-hitting title song — made the cut on Thursday. Perhaps Grohl was worried about performing too much material unfamiliar to the crowd — a significant portion of which was in his mid-50s age cohort, but also with many fans a generation or two younger.
The show had its highlights, from crowd-pleasers like the crunchy “Monkey Wrench” to “The Teacher,” a tribute to Grohl’s mother, Virginia, who died in 2022. It was a heartfelt, lengthy elegy in which he played a double-necked guitar and sang: “You taught me how to be / Never showed me how to say good bye.”
Also entertaining was a medley where the band members were introduced, and got to play a song by a band they used to be in. It was especially fun since Mendel was once in Sunny Day Real Estate, Jaffee played with the Wallflowers, and Smear was a member of L.A. punks, the Germs.
Grohl was, as always, an ingratiating presence. He drops F and MF bombs at an astounding rate without seeming the slightest bit subversive or mean-spirited. The joy he takes from being on stage is infectious, and was reciprocated by a singing-along audience pleased to be hanging out on what turned out to be a pleasant and not-too-crushingly-humid of a summer evening.
The Foos have a number of memorable songs that the band has made stick over its 30-year career — such as “The Best of You,” “Learn to Fly,” and “Everlong,” which was the final encore, with fireworks.
But the band doesn’t have an endless supply, nor much variety in their meat-and-potatoes approach. Many songs like “Run” were burdened by drawn out arrangements that turned into a slog.
Early on, Grohl promised that as the evening went on the Foos would be generous in performing “song after song after song after song … three hours isn’t enough!”
On the contrary, it was more than enough.
