Gig memories: Foo Fighters at Brixton Academy in 1995

 
Foo Fighters
Built To Spill
Brixton Academy, 15 November 1995

Sadly Neil Young has cancelled on me again. The first time was back in 2003 when I was supposed to see him at Brixton Academy and arrived at the venue excited only to find a notice saying that due to illness the show was kaput. This time, again it couldn't be helped, but Poncho from Crazy Horse has hurt his hand and the the final dates of their tour all had to be cancelled. This means that instead of rocking out to a sprawling Shakey solo tonight at the O2 Arena I'm instead here writing this post. So rather than reporting back on the Neil show I may as well reminisce about a happy gig memory.

Recently I discovered a page in a notebook written after I had seen the Foo Fighters for the first time back in 1995, just after the band's debut album was released. They had played one London show prior to the album coming out, at King's College I recall, a small show that sold out immediately due more to Dave Grohl's Nirvana fame than that of his new band but by the time I saw them a couple of months later the band were making big waves with This Is A Call and I'll Stick Around getting major play on the radio and MTV (back then it actually played music videos, believe it or not). Although I haven't followed the Foo Fighters' music in years (for me they peaked with their second album), at the time I really loved the self-titled first album, written and recorded entirely by Grohl, aside from a little guitar work on a couple of tracks by the one and only Greg Dulli, who I presume he became pals with after performing in the Backbeat Band together. So Grohl was the badass drummer in Nirvana and he was friends with one of my favourite artists, Dulli: it was hard not to love the guy.

The Brixton show, the second of two nights I remember, was my first opportunity to see the Foos live and the hype so was high that even MTV was there to record the show. Not surprisingly, given the band's rise to stadium rock legends, the whole concert is of course on YouTube now. I'm reluctant to watch it myself because I prefer to keep my own memories in tact rather than having them confused in my mind with the TV broadcast but I've included it above nonetheless. 

One part not recorded, of course, was the support band, the excellent Built To Spill, who I'm actually going to see again for the first time since then next month. According to the notes I wrote all those years back, I wasn't that familiar with the band at the time but rather nicely compared them to Shudder To Think (a high compliment coming from my teenage self). The band had released their classic album There's Nothing Wrong With Love the year before and for the Foo Fighters shows were touring with a cellist, giving them an unusual edge to the typical American indie fare from around that time and helping to bring songs like Car (surely one of the best Built To Spill tracks) beautifully to life. Unfortunately most of audience weren't there for Built To Spill (even though singer/guitarist Doug Martsch was even sporting his impressive beard back then - it's one of my most vivid memories of the band hilariously enough) and were eager to witness their new post-Nirvana rock gods, the Foos, so were rather indifferent to the support act, excellent though they were, leading to Martsch constantly reassuring the crowd that "we only have a few more songs left, then the Foo Fighters will be on" and getting a few cheers that way. I'm looking forward to finally seeing them again without the pressure of Grohl's keen fans rushing them on. At the time I knew that Built To Spill were good but given the setting could be much better.

The anticipation for the Foos throughout Built To Spill's set reached a massive high by the time they went off. The amount of Nirvana t-shirts there that night was actually amusing: every second kid was sporting one and completely outnumbered any Foo Fighters merchandise. The crowd was there to see Grohl, of that there was no doubt at all, well and perhaps Pat Smear too who had briefly been a member of Nirvana near the end. This obvious fact didn't appear to daunt the band though and they all looked distinctly chirpy when they finally arrived on stage. I was right up front at the barrier and the crowd went suitably crazy. Grohl looked exactly how he did in the Nirvana days, all long hair, teeth and baggy clothes and Smear was particularly amusingly dressed in a black PVC number complete with hat, which I noted at the time looked like a cross between Judas Priest in their heyday and Freddie Mercury circa The Game (it later emerged that both Smear and Grohl were massive Queen fans so the outfit may well have been a tribute to him). 

The show itself, I remember, seemed to go by in a flash. They did only have one album at the time after all and the played it in its entirety (bar the excellent X-Static for some reason) and every one of the B-sides they had recorded up until that point (all of which I knew then - I had bought every single). But there were also a few tracks I didn't know including the very heavy Nirvana-esque opening number, which apparently was Enough Space and was later included on their superb second album The Color And The Shape. They also played My Hero that night which didn't become a hit for three more years. It's interesting in retrospect to realise they were already playing songs from their follow-up album a couple of months after their debut was released (and didn't get released for a couple more years), which just shows what a huge creative roll Grohl was on at the time. There was one cover though that night, a bassy, post-punk style version of Tubeway Army's Down In The Park which provided the encore and ended the show in style.

Other than the music, which I remember being loud and fast and heavy with the band barely leaving the time to breathe, my main memory of that night is just how crazy and frenzied the crowd was. The security guards had their work cut out for them pulling out crowd surfers and those attempting to stage dive (a few actually manage to make it past them to achieve this feat) and with every upbeat, guitar-driven song (which was pratically every single number), the crowd enthusically jumped up and down and pushed each other around. I'm not sure I could deal with that amount of energy now but back then it was without a doubt hugely exciting and helped keep the adrenaline of both the crowd and the band going (of course it helped it was a fairly short too).

This was somewhat of a bittersweet show in a way because I had tickets to see Nirvana at the same venue a couple of years earlier but the shows never happened due to Kurt Cobain's tragic death. The Foo Fighters concert was probably a happier, more smiley affair than a Nirvana gig would have been but it definitely gave a taste of that kind of energy they specialised in and thinking back I do realise I am lucky to have seen the Foos in their prime, back when everything was new and exciting for them. That said, I did see the band one more time a couple of years later at a much smaller venue too (the much-missed Astoria) and the Foos really were in full swing by then and that show was much more incredible, for me anyway, than this one. But the Brixton was definitely something special too, if just for the newness, the energy and the pure excitement of the time.