Dave Grohl and Foo Fighters followed up their Lollapalooza gig in Chicago last week with a few dates in Missouri, Kansas, and (tomorrow) Oklahoma. One performance that wasn’t previously advertised was a sturdy middle finger directed at the hate-mongering group of homophobic skunks known as the Westboro Baptist Church.
In the guise of their disco alter egos, the Dee Gees, Grohl and company drove by the perennially-picketing ding-dongs and dropped a thumping cover of the Bee Gees’s Saturday Night Fever-associated hit, “You Should Be Dancing.” (The Dee Gees’s album Hail Satin, which debuted in mid-July, is half Bee Gees/Andy Gibb covers and half live Foo Fighters originals from their recent Medicine at Midnight album.)
The Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America” and the Anti-Defamation League says “lashes out at Jews, members of various Christian denominations, Muslims and people of other religions,” gained nationwide recognition in 1998 when they picketed the funeral of lynched gay man Matthew Shepard with repulsive signs and slogans.
Though the WBC’s protest on Thursday wasn’t exactly heavily attended, it is still glorious to see these people bested by funky beats. It is also heartwarming to see a white rock group championing a musical mode that was, for decades, frequently dismissed by the majority for its association with gay audiences and performers of color, even leading to some violent clashes.
Here is a different angle.
This is not the first time Grohl has crossed swords with this particular hate group. In 2011 the WBC’s late founder, Fred Phelps, called their music “hell-bound and hedonistic,” and called for a picket at their Kansas City, Missouri show. Fighting back, the band got on a flatbed truck and trolled them with a dopey tune “Keep’ It Clean (Hot Buns)”
In 2015, something similar happened, but this time the Foo Fighters fought back with Rick Astley’s “we fooled you!” anthem “Never Gonna Give You Up.” (What’s nice about this story is that it led to a meet-up and friendship between the group and Astley, who have since performed together.)
“You Should Be Dancing,” written by Maurice, Robin, and Barry Gibb, was first recorded for the Bee Gees’s 1976 album Children of the World. (Here’s some bar trivia: one of the percussionists was Stephen Stills, who was recording at the same Miami recording studio and sat in.) The song hit number one on Billboard’s Hot 100, the third of nine Bee Gees tunes to do so.