Foo Fighters troll Westboro Baptist Church protesters with disco-backed call to "love everybody"

The band played their cover of Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing" from a flatbed truck

By Reid McCarter  |  August 6, 2021 | 7:00pm
Music Features Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters troll Westboro Baptist Church protesters with disco-backed call to
Long-haired, bearded, peace-exhorting man, Dave Grohl. Photo: Kevin Winter

Say what you will about the success of Foo Fighters’ Record Store Day release/elaborate joke/spin-off project Dee-Gees, but the good times spirit of disco sure does make a perfect backing soundtrack for the band’s latest run-in with America’s premier hatefreaks, Westboro Bapist Church.

Yesterday, when the Foos’ tour arrived in Bonner Springs, Kansas, Westboro arrived with neon placards to protest outside the city’s Azura Ampitheater. Before long, the band had assembled on a flatbed truck in their white Dee Gees outfits to slowly drive on over to the protest while playing their cover of Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing.”

A video taken by people following along behind the truck shows the Foo Fighters maneuvering through the parking lot and onto a road while vamping on the track, eventually arriving right in front of the Westboro shitheads. “I got something to say.” Grohl calls out over the noise of Church members singing. “Because you know what? I love you. I do!”

“The way I look at it, I love everybody,” he continues, a disco beat pumping along behind him. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Can’t you just love everybody? ‘Cause I think it’s about love!” Some people shout back in response, but Grohl concludes by yelling out, “You shouldn’t be hating… you should be dancing!” before the song kicks back in and the truck slowly drives off, a disco falsetto trailing through the air.

Foo Fighters have already had to deal with a different variety of protesters when playing a show in June that required audience members to present proof of vaccination. And, in the past, they’ve trolled the Westboro trolls right back by blasting (future collaborator) Rick Astley before a Kansas City concert in 2015 and performing another flatbed show back in 2011.

This approach seems to work. Whether they’re drowned out by a Foo Fighters set or, as Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe showed a couple of years back, a wall of kazoo buzzing, Westboro can’t protest all that well when you can’t hear them.

[via Rolling Stone]

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