Over three loud, sweaty, emotional, and supremely fun hours, the band ushered back in the exhilarating familiarity of our pasts, giving an experience many music fans feared wouldn’t come back for a much longer time.
Hovering over the line, a small group of protestors touted signs that railed against both the vaccine Another sign invoked Dave Grohl’s late Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain, claiming he would be “Rock ’N’ Rollin’ Over,” which does a lot of work in just assuming that Cobain would be both anti-vaccine and a Covid conspiracy theorist.
One older couple apologized for their exuberance on their first “big night out” in a long time, as if we all weren’t feeling that same type of nervous but thrilling energy of being inside with tens of thousands of strangers once again.
It was truly a sea of bodies, with the GA standing-room section packed to the brim with people politely honoring the fact that maybe not everyone was ready to open up this pit.
There was no time or need for more stripped-down moments or breaks: This was the “return of rock & roll” at the Garden, and the genre’s personal caretaker was not about to let the crowd forget that for one second.
Later, during the encore, the band covered the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing,” making for the live debut of “The Dee Gees.” Long before they performed the song, Barry Gibb’s face had a prominent role in the show, replacing the group’s logo as Hawkins’ bass drum cover.
Even more shocking was the fact that Chappelle was excellent at belting out the Nineties megahit, another grand tribute to the hours of karaoke we’ve missed out on over the past year.
“For the last year, I had this reoccurring dream that I would fuckin’ walk onstage and we would look at each other for the first time,” Grohl told the crowd in the middle of “Best of You.
But concert closer “Everlong” may be the most apt: Who knew that anything could ever feel this real or be this good again? It wasn’t just the return of rock to the Garden; it was a return to joy.