Dave Grohl revealed on Tuesday to The Mercury that Foo Fighters had been jamming on Ricky Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” in the warm-up room before their set when they saw Astley was also on the festival bill.
After a few runs of the song, they suddenly realised it shared a similar arrangement to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and later performed a mash-up of the two chart-topping hits with Astley joining them on stage.
The band famously blasted the song at controversial Westboro Baptist Church members who protested outside a Foo Fighters concert in Kansas City two years ago.
“We will never forget that song now. Once we started jamming it backstage, we kept Rickrolling ourselves all day long,” Grohl said.
“We were cracking up when we realised it had the same arrangement as Smells Like Teen Spirit. We didn’t know if we were going to do it or not.
“Halfway through the gig, I see standing at the side of the stage and I walked over to him in the middle of a keyboard solo and say ‘Hi, I’m Dave’ and he says “Hi, I’m Rick’, I walked back over to the guys and said ‘We’ve gotta do it.’”
