Foo Fighters.
Here’s my story about the day of the Foo Fighters show in Adelaide on Monday the 5th of December, 2011.
So my friend, Eliza, and I woke up at an early 3.50am on the Monday, 5/12/11. We showered and got ready and then left by 4.45am. We did a Maccas run on the way and arrived at the Adelaide Oval at around 5.10am. It was around 15degrees at this time of day, so we had brought with us blankets and pillow thingys to sit on. Now we just had to wait 11 hours for the gates to open. We froze our tits off until the sun came out, then it ended up getting really hot. We passed the time by listening to music, singing, slept for a bit, had a push up race (we suck so bad at push ups, so you can imagine how funny this was), ate a shitload of gum and then moulded the wrappers into a ball and used it as a tennis ball and had a tennis tournament, used our pillows to shade us from the heat, ate food, walked around, died from the heat a few times, used the tables to shade us from the heat and within the last half hour waiting I was struggling to breathe and stand up. Eliza decided it’d be a great idea to get 7 News to interview us, so after getting their attention they interviewed us about being the first in line. I wasn’t saying much because I was trying my hardest not to cry, but that ended up failing. So thanks to Eliza I cried on Channel 7 News. After that I continued to cry until I managed to calm myself down. I was still struggling to keep my breath, but before I knew it we were running as fast as we could to get to the barrier. We made it. It was the fastest I had ever ran in my life. We were on Nate and Pat’s side, although we were only around 4 metres away from where Dave would be. After almost throwing up, I started crying again. This wasn’t just tears but the whole hyperventilating shit. Once I calmed myself down, we sat down against the barrier for a bit. By now I felt much better. Within a few minutes, the first supporting act, Calling All Cars, came on. They were alright, went for about 20 minutes. Then we sat down again and waited for the next act. When they came on we stood up. They were called Fucked Up. The music was alright, but the lead singer was mental. By the time they got to the second song, he had already taken his shirt off. By the time it got to the third song, he was in the huge crowd somewhere. We didn’t seem him until the last song they played. They were a good band, but the singer was just mad. Anyway, about 30 minutes after that, Tenacious D came on. They were amazing. They played for about 40 minutes to an hour I think, and I loved every second. After they finished I started crying again. I calmed myself down for a bit, until one of the roadies comes out with Dave’s DG-335 guitar. I started crying again. I calmed myself down, until 8.20pm came and they walked on. Then it was just endless tears for the rest of the night. They all looked absolutely amazing. Even though Taylor shaved and cut his hair slightly, he still looked absolutely great. Pat could’ve been mistaken for the same age as the rest of them, and Nate looked exceptionally amazing. Chris looked better than I’ve ever seen him before. And Dave, well Dave was Dave. He was even more beautiful in real life. I can’t even describe how great they all looked. Here are all the songs they played (in order):
All My Life
Rope
The Pretender
My Hero
Learn to Fly
White Limo
Arlandria
Breakout
Cold Day in the Sun
Long Road to Ruin
Stacked Actors
Walk
Monkey Wrench
Let it Die
These Days
This is a Call
In the Flesh (Pink Floyd cover)
Best of You
Encore:
Wheels
Times Like These
Generator
Tie Your Mother Down (Queen cover)
Everlong
They played for over 2 and a half hours, I cried for every second of it. During parts of the show Dave would talk to the crowd, talking about real music, how they don’t use computers, how all you need is a guitar. Then him and Taylor started being all cute. Dave was introducing the members, then got to Taylor and exclaimed how great he was. Then Taylor went on about how he wouldn’t be there without having such a great musician as their frontman. Then after Best of You, they left the stage. After about 2 minutes, a backstage camera was turned on and came on the screens, showing Dave and Taylor. The crowd went nuts, chanting for one more song. After Dave agreed to do one more, Taylor suggested two. The crowd kept cheering until we managed to get them back on to play 5 more songs. For Wheels and Times Like These, Dave went to the end of the runway (which he had ran up and down a few times already) and played them acoustically for ‘the people in the shitty seats’. For Wheels, the crowd sang along obviously, but left us to sing the back up parts. It was absolutely amazing. After played Times Like These, he went back to the main stage to play Generator, Tie Your Mother Down and Everlong with the rest of the band. The people next to me kept trying to comfort me but I couldn’t stop crying. I cried the most in These Days, Best of You and Everlong. Words cannot describe how amazing the night was. I’ll never forget it and I could never thank the boys enough for giving me such an amazing memory that’ll stay with me forever.
You can find the photos I took here.
Now, here I will tell the whole story of the Tuesday night 6.12.11, when we met the Foo Fighters.
After finding out where the Foo Fighters stayed, mum was willing to take me and Eliza down there and try and find them. My mum knows how much I love them all, so she helped us find them. First we went to the hotel they stayed in, ‘The Hilton’, and asked them if they were there. The lady at the counter replied with nothing but ‘Sorry, I can’t tell you anything.’ This wouldn’t stop us, so we stayed there for a bit. As we were about to walk around the block and look for them, a man saw our Fooeys shirts and came up to us. He said, ‘I know where they are, you see that street over there? Turn right down there and they’re in a Chinese Restaurant.’ We ask him if he’s serious, and he replied with, ‘No, I’m serious, I’m a radio host and also my mates have gone down to try and meet them.’ This was the only chance we had, so we started walking. We turned down the street, only to see that the whole street was lined with Chinese Restaurants. We walked up and down, until we came to the last Chinese Restaurant in sight. I looked in and saw Taylor sitting up the back straight away. Me and Eliza lost it. There were three other girls with us, who got us a table and ordered us some drinks. They were really nice. By this time, I couldn’t feel my hands at all, my legs were shaking so much and I could not breathe at all. I was so close to going into some sort of fit. Then I turned around and saw Pat and Rami having a smoke. We slowly made our way over to them, still crying. Pat was so nice. He tried to calm us down and he told us Dave and Taylor would be out to see us. Then he turned to the other girls and said, ‘Now that’s a true fan, why aren’t you crying?’ He was really really really sweet. We spoke to him for about 5 minutes. Nate came out during these five minutes. He didn’t seem as willing to talk to us and the other girls spoke to him. Although, whilst we were balling our eyes out talking to Pat, he pulled out his phone and took a pictures of us. Then I looked to the door of the restaurant and then Taylor walked out. I burst into tears. He looked at us, smiled and then said ‘Why are you crying? We’re just old men! You should be crying over Justin Bieber!’ Then he came up to us and hugged us. Man he was so skinny. Then we got a picture with him. Then Eliza turns to him and said, ‘You shaved your beard off.’ And he replied with, ‘Yes I did, don’t you like it now?’ and we both said, ‘No we do but we just like you with a beard.’ and he said ‘Oh so my face looks ugly now?’ and me and Eliza just cried even more and I managed to say, ‘No you’re beautiful.’ then he told he’d grow his beard back just for us. Then I turned back to look at the door and Dave walked out. I almost died. I couldn’t talk and I started struggling to breathe. He looked at me and Eliza and said, ‘What the fuck?’ Then he came up to us and said, ‘It’s okay’ then he hugged us and as he pulled away he stroked our faces. Then we had a picture with him. He was so fucking nice. He started talking to us for a bit, asking: ‘Did you guys see the show last night?’ We said yes, and mum told him we got there at 5am. ‘Did you get to the front?’ He asked, we said yes, then, worried, he asked, ‘You didn’t get too squished did you?’ We answered with no we were fine. Then, we’re both still crying, I managed to get out, ‘Thankyou so much’ before losing it again. He hugged us once more and then walked back to the hotel. Awkwardly, we had to walk the same way to get to the car. So we let them walk ahead about 70 meters. Then we started walking. I was still hyperventilating and crying. Then they stopped for some photos with some firemen. Then we caught up, he was about 5 meters in front of us now. I was on the phone to my friend, Bec, who is also a fan. Then he turned around and laughed and shook his head. He waited for us and said ‘You have to stop crying.’ Then Eliza asked if he could talk to her dad on the phone, so he did. Then I lost it even more, if that’s even possible. He looked at me and smiled and hugged me again. Then after giving the phone back to Eliza, he turned to me and said, ‘I think he thought I was your dad.’ I laughed, then asked if he could talk to my friend Bec. So I handed him my phone and he spoke to her, asked how she was until saying, ‘Hang on.’ Then he put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You need to calm down.’ I couldn’t control myself. My legs were shaking so much, I couldn’t move my hands, I could hardly breathe, could hardly talk and couldn’t stop crying. Then Dave said he had to go back to the hotel. So we said goodbye then got into the car. I didn’t stop crying for the whole night, it was just so surreal. Then the next day at school, everyone was asking how it was and I lost it. I started crying so much and hyperventilating again. Then I went to the bathrooms to sit with Eliza, then ended up throwing up. I lost all feelings in my legs and hands and had to be carried to the office. Over 4 people had to assist me and try to slow down my breathing. I had several panic attacks and if I didn’t calm down when I did I would’ve had to have been rushed to hospital. I can’t believe it happened. Those two nights have been the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. Every single one of them are so talented, so sweet, so nice and absolutely flawless. I can’t even put my emotions into words, I love them so much, meeting them has been a dream come true, a dream I’ve been wishing for everytime 11:11 comes for ages, a dream I wish for everytime I can, a dream I never thought would come true. They have helped me through everything, I could never thank them enough. I wish that every Foo Fighters fans could share the same experience as me. I’ll never forget these nights, I’ll never forget how nice they were to me. I love them more than words can describe.
