Gary Flockhart: Retro tours draw mixed reaction

DAVE Grohl isn’t big on nostalgia, at least not when it comes to the trend of bands playing classic albums in their entirety on tour.

Dave Grohl. Pic: Ian Georgeson

In a recent interview, the Foo Fighters’ frontman, who brings his band to Murrayfield Stadium next June, says he “hates” when bands do that.

“I don’t like it when a band’s tour is just to play one past record,” says the former Nirvana man. “I f***** hate that. It’s presumptuous. It’s lazy.”

The Ohioan went on to slate All Tomorrow’s Parties for their annual series of concerts in London in which bands are invited to play a seminal work.

“All Tomorrow’s Parties?” growled Grohl. “More like ‘last year’s f***** party’.”

Safe to say Grohl wasn’t in attendance at Liquid Room on Tuesday night to see The Wedding Present perform their 1994 album, Watusi, in full.

Green Day, Kasabian and Muse are just some of the bands to have played their best-loved albums in recent years, and the Manic Street Preachers perform classic album The Holy Bible in full for on tour in December.

Personally, I don’t see the harm in it. There are dozens of bands I’ve never had the chance to see performing their best albums live, and even if you were there to see them play them when they were released, it’s highly unlikely they would have performed them from start to finish.

If someone, then, was to offer me the chance to hear, say, Radiohead perform OK Computer, or Prince play Sign O’ The Times, or Bright Eyes play Fevers And Mirrors in full, I’d bite their hand off.

We still listen to classic albums years after their releases, so what’s wrong with hearing them live again?

If you ask me, what’s a lot lazier is playing your greatest hits over and over, year in and year out, and then maybe throwing in a couple of new ones off the latest record.