Foo Fighters Perform Live Mashup of John Lennon and Van Halen Covers
At last night's Foo Fighters show in Brazil, the band pulled out an interesting mix of covers. Following the lead of video mashup maven Mighty Mike, they set the lyrics of Van Halen's "Jump" to the music of John Lennon's "Imagine." You can watch the performance in the fan-shot video below.
Grohl introduced "Rami St. Jaffe," on the keyboards, "the one person who has any sort of musical ability," as he began playing the iconic intro to Lennon's utopian song. The crowd responded excitedly to what they thought they were getting, and Grohl teased it out a bit further.
"That's right. It's a song of hope. We're gonna sing it for you right now," he said before instead delivering David Lee Roth's lyrics. There was a confused moment before the crowd responded with a mixture of applause and laughter.
Grohl had teased the performance earlier in the day, tweeting a video of the band practicing the cover. The idea came from an eight-year-old video mashup of the two songs by Mighty Mike.
"Woodshedding for the summer tour has never felt so good....see you out there....(I’ll learn the words by then, I swear)," Grohl tweeted, along with the video. "Thanks to Mighty Mike for the inspirado. (Oh, and Halen and Lennon, too)."
Honored by the mention, Mighty Mike took to Facebook to express his gratitude. "Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters just covered my 2010 mashup between Lennon and Van Halen and they thank me in the credits! Now I can die peacefully!"
It's not the first time the Foo Fighters have faked out the audience with a mashup. In August 2017, they played the intro to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," before bringing out Rick Astley to perform "Never Gonna Give You Up."
The band is currently touring South America, after which they'll do a recently extended North American run.