The Foo Fighters are no strangers to viral news stories. Over the band’s long history, they have hit the headlines many times. From helping miners caught in the Beaconsfield Mine collapse to doing a surprise performance in the small Italian town of Cesena after seeing a viral video made by 1000 local musicians, the band is never afraid to do something unusual. However, their latest headline-grabbing act is by far the funniest.
After a performance at Lollapalooza, the band moved onto Kansas to perform shows at the Azura Amphitheater. These shows were picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church, a notorious Christian group that has picketed many events, often bringing offensive slogans and signs with them. The group is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America.”
However, in typical Grohl fashion, this protest got a funky twist when the Foo Fighters turned up on a flatbed truck, dressed as their disco alter-egos, the Dee Gees. Grohl told the gathered protestors “ladies and gentlemen, I got something to say. Because you know what, I love you. I do!” He explained as the band laid down a funky bassline. “The way I look at it is that I love everybody. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Can’t you just love everybody? ‘Cause I think it’s about love! That’s what I think, we’re all about love. And you shouldn’t be hating, you know what you should be doing? You should be dancing.”
The band then launched into a cover of the 1976 Bee Gees hit “You Should Be Dancing,” amusing those who had come to laugh at the protestors and infuriating the church. This song is off the Foo Fighters’ 2021 album Hail Satin, which fuses Bee Gees covers with live tracks from their Medicine at Midnight tour.
This isn’t the first time the Foo Fighters have mocked the hate group. After the church’s founder, Fred Phelps, called the band’s music hedonistic and demanded a picket of their Kansas show in 2011, the band pulled a similar stunt, jumping on a flatbed to serenade the protestors with their song “Keep’ It Clean (Hot Buns).” When a similar situation occurred in 2015, the band decided to give the hate group a real-life Rickroll by performing Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
