They were a 5-piece when Walsh joined but was down to three when they released their second album James Gang Rides Again. He replaced Glenn Schwartz in the band, who Walsh considers a mentor.
Walsh joined the Cleveland-based group in 1969 after making a name for himself as one of the top guitarists in Ohio. The James Gang is best known for their guitarist, Joe Walsh, whose playing on this track helped establish him as a superstar guitarist. The song peaked at #59 in the Billboard 100 in 1971. Certainly, there’s a weird energy to These Days, on which the audience take up the refrain of “it’s alright” before Grohl kicks back in: “It’s easy for you to say it’s alright,” he howls.This song has been played a bunch on the radio but Joe Walsh’s intro doesn’t get old to me. His voice cracks as he sings the intro to Times Like These and he turns away from the microphone, the crowd filling in for him, before wiping his eyes and collecting himself in time-honoured Dave Grohl style: “Come on,” he bellows, “you motherfuckers.” It’s an emotional shift that keeps occurring during their performance, which swings from overwhelming sadness to catharsis. It ends with a set by the Foo Fighters themselves, augmented by a succession of special guests: drummers including Blink-182’s Travis Barker, 12-year-old internet sensation Nandi Bushell and Hawkins’ 16-year-old son Shane Paul McCartney, who duets with Chrissie Hynde on a version of Oh! Darling and rampages his way through Helter Skelter.īut for all the assembled auxiliary star power, it’s hard to take your eyes off Grohl, who seems to be struggling. There’s no sign of current vocalist Adam Lambert: instead Eurovision star Sam Ryder – by Grohl’s account a late addition to the bill – delivers such a masterly version of Somebody to Love that you rather imagine Lambert watching at home, frantically scanning the terms of his contract. The audience are on safer ground with the surviving members of Queen, the first band Hawkins saw live. Augmented by Grohl on drums, their hit Funk #49 sounds fantastic. The 1960s-70s power trio featured Joe Walsh, who would go on to join the Eagles, but the crowd give every impression of never having heard their proto-metal boogie rock. The audience seem cheerfully baffled by the appearance of Hawkins’ all-time favourite band, the James Gang, who have reformed specially for the occasion. Occasionally it offers an object lesson in how the music tastes and cultural inputs of American alt-rockers differ from those of their British fans. He turns up so often, in so many roles – playing bass with the Pretenders, and with Wolfgang Van Halen and the Darkness’s Justin Hawkins performing Hot for Teacher providing vocals for a version of the Police’s Next to You with Stewart Copeland on drums – that you wouldn’t be surprised if he appeared behind the counter in one of the food stalls, handing out nachos. It’s a curious and curiously entertaining bombardment of music, with Grohl the linking factor. Kesha performing at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert.
Kesha delivers a killer cover of T Rex’s Children of the Revolution – her polite “thank you” at the end is so at odds with the rawness of her performance that it is greeted with a ripple of laughter – and Supergrass barrels through Alright. The surviving members of Rush perform the knotty instrumental YYZ on a stage that earlier saw Nile Rodgers doing David Bowie’s Let’s Dance with Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme on vocals.
Then comes a video message from Billie Eilish, followed by AC/DC’s Brian Johnson singing Back in Black and Let There Be Rock with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich on drums. Mark Ronson performs a beautifully dreamy acoustic version of Valerie with Grohl’s daughter Violet on vocals. How else to explain the bill at the first of two tribute concerts organised in the wake of his death in March? It swerves wildly, serving up mainstream pop next to tricky prog rock, metal beside Britpop. Clearly, this is an attitude that Grohl shared with the Foo Fighters’ late drummer, Taylor Hawkins.
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