When Dave Grohl and his band Foo Fighters took the stage in Providence Park on Friday night, he might as well have come home.
Grohl isn’t from Portland or the Pacific Northwest. Only one of the guys in the band – and they’re all guys – is from nearby. That’s bassist Nate Mendel, whom Grohl introduced as “from the Tri-Cities.”
Even though the Foo Fighters weren’t born and raised in the Northwest, they owe their entire existence to the Pacific Northwest grunge scene of the ’90s.
Grohl began playing drums for Nirvana in 1990, just in time to ride the MTV wave of superstardom with the band.
For those of you who have just landed on Earth: Nirvana frontman and grunge god Kurt Cobain committed suicide in 1994.
That same year, Grohl formed the Foo Fighters and, as he recalled from the stage, came to Portland in 1995.
Friday night, Grohl said, was “the biggest fucking show for us in 30 fucking years. When we played the Satyricon in 1995, it wasn’t like that.”
Read more: The legendary Satyricon Club offered sex, drugs and rock’n’roll and embodied a Portland that is gone forever
The Foo Fighters must have liked Portland because they returned twice more in 1995, to La Luna, an all-ages alternative music venue that closed in 1999. In fact, this was the band’s 12th performance in Portland since 1995.
Friday night’s stadium extravaganza was probably a little different than the shows of the ’90s. The crowd was definitely bigger. According to a Timbers spokesperson, the venue, which has a capacity of around 30,000, was sold out.
And it was both older and younger than what you would have seen at the Satyricon in 1995. Many in the audience had grey hair and beards. And there were even small children wearing earmuffs to protect their ears.
14-year-old Luciana Shaw was from San Francisco for her fourth Foo Fighters show in Portland.
“I just like the way they sound,” Luciana said. “They all fit together so well.”
She and her mother, Kimberly Shaw, flew up to meet Shaw’s sister, Michelle Tiegel, and Tiegel’s son, 15-year-old Elliot Tiegel, who live in Leavenworth, Washington.
Kimberly Shaw and Michelle Tiegel were die-hard Nirvana fans and had been listening to the Foo Fighters for years. Shaw saw the band seven or eight times.
Luciana plays bass and her cousin Elliot plays drums. Both were thrilled.
“It’s going to be great,” Elliot said before the show began.
He wasn’t the only one looking forward to the show, both because of the band and the venue.
Friday marked the first time Providence Park has hosted a rock ‘n’ roll show since Joan Jett & The Blackhearts and Fountains of Wayne headlined a Nike event there in July 2005.
In 2005, the park had a different name and the atmosphere in the neighborhood was different. I know this because I spent most of the winter and spring of that year there, across the street from what was then PGE Park.
Back then, the view of the park was not obstructed, so neighbors would pull out lawn chairs and watch baseball games from the street.
The area is now completely built up and it is no longer possible to watch games or shows from the sidewalk. On Friday, however, people outside the stadium could still hear the music blaring from the speakers.
And they had plenty of time to listen. The gates opened at 4pm, the first opener, Alex G., performed at 5:30pm
By 6 p.m., the area was crowded. Packed MAX trains were ferrying people to the stadium and much of the area was closed to traffic. Long lines formed at the gates.
Even though the transition from Providence Park as a football stadium to Providence Park as a rock stadium seems to have worked well overall, at times it was slow to get people into the stadium and moving around in it.
The halls are much narrower than those at Moda Center, where there are fewer seats, so food and toilet lines and traffic flow are tight, making it difficult to move around at times.
Neighbors said parking is severely limited for residents. “My partner and I live a few blocks away,” Monica Sifferle said. “Parking has always been a problem, even on a normal day, because there is no infrastructure to serve the people who live here and need a parking spot.”
“It’s even worse at Timbers games, often we can’t find parking,” Sifferle said. “Last night was worse than any other Timbers game.”
A person who lives over half a mile away in Goose Hollow said the noise was so loud she couldn’t sleep.
There were some complaints about the sound mix from spectators in the stadium, depending on where they were in the park.
But most people seemed to be having fun.
At around 6:30 p.m. The Pretenders took the stage.
Chrissie Hynde may be 72, but her voice is still as strong as it was in her prime. And when she sang “I’ll Stand By You” “for the ladies,” the audience, which was already almost full, was thrilled.
Hynde’s performance was the last time we saw a woman on stage, aside from a security guard with whom Grohl danced for a minute during his performance and a sticker on one of lead guitarist Chris Shiflett’s many guitars.
Maybe it’s because I just heard an episode of The Ezra Klein Show about masculinity, but after the Foo Fighters took the stage around 8 p.m., I couldn’t stop thinking about the show in the context of masculinity.
The band is all-male, and the crowd is mostly male, too. Grohl, who played guitar on Friday and left drumming to band newcomer Josh Freese, who took over after the death of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins in 2022, speaks to a certain kind of masculinity with his music. He’s clearly all about screaming guitars and intense drumming, what he calls “raw rock and roll,” and he still headbangs like a 22-year-old.
At one point he gave the audience a choice between a “sweet love ballad” and a “screaming rock song,” and the crowd overwhelmingly chose the latter.
While Grohl’s music is certainly masculine, it is neither exclusionary nor misogynistic. His lyrics are general enough to appeal to any gender, and his impact is inviting, joyful, and very, very energetic.
On Friday, Grohl, 55, seemed to suck that endless energy straight out of the ecstatic crowd. He ran around the stage, doused himself with water, chewed gum and even smoked a cigarette while introducing his band to the crowd.
One of those band members was guitarist Pat Smear, another man who is full of joie de vivre and has a large following in Portland. His performance received the longest applause of the evening.
I don’t count myself as a Foo Fighters fan. I like my male rock musicians a little more emo, my lyrics a little more readable. I didn’t go to a rock show at PGE Park in 2005; I screamed along when The Shins played “Caring Is Creepy” at the Crystal Ballroom. Twice.
But I know a few songs and what I love about a concert like the Foo Fighters’ on Friday night is that it feels like you have a day pass to a cult. You get to sit with the believers and nod your head to the prayers.
And you get a glimpse into their charismatic leader. You understand what they’re thinking when cult members drop everything to follow him wherever he goes.
When the band played the opening riff of my favorite Foo Fighters song, “Everlong,” toward the end of Friday’s three-hour show, I was there. And when fireworks exploded over Providence Park into the perfect August night at the end of the song, I was part of the cult for a minute at least, excited to welcome Grohl home and already looking for tickets to Green Day, Providence Park’s next rock’n’roll communion on September 25.
– Lizzy Acker reports on life and culture and writes the advice column But why? You can reach them at 503-221-8052, [email protected] or @lizzzyacker
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