Dave Grohl Details Foo Fighters’ Westboro Protest Rickroll
Foo Fighters managed to upstage the Westboro Baptist Church’s hateful protests outside the band’s Kansas City concert Friday with a hilarious rickroll. Later that night, before an acoustic rendition of “My Hero,” Dave Grohl used the single’s opening riffs to detail why they pranked the controversial church. “You can’t just sit there and do nothing; you got to go out and say what you want to say. So we did,” Grohl said.
“Tonight, we were sitting backstage, and someone said: ‘Guess who is coming tonight?’ And I said, ‘Who?’ They said, ‘Them.’ I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Cause.’ And I said, ‘Cool, let’s go out and fuckin’ hang out with them,'” Grohl told the Sprint Center crowd (via Spin). “So we didn’t have enough time to put together the big old show that we put on last time, so we figured, you know what, why don’t we just fucking rickroll their ass? Cause nothing says love like a little Rick Astley in your life, you know what I’m saying? Never gonna give his ass up!”
On Friday afternoon, with the Westboro Baptist Church protestors situated across from the Sprint Center, a pickup truck carrying the Foo Fighters cruised toward the protests blasting Green Day’s “American Idiot” and then “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Dozens of Foo fans – perhaps anticipating another run-in between the band and the church – then turned the protests into a Rick Astley dance party.
While still strumming “My Hero,” Grohl added, “So I’m going to dedicate this song to all the people who go out and speak their mind, to stand up for what they think is right, because every time we got to stand up in this city in front of them, we do it because we feel like we’re standing up for what we think is right.”