Drummer Greg Barton will be “Foo Fighting Cancer” by playing every Foo Fighters song ever made in one sitting for charity.
Barton will drum his way through 128 songs on June 7 in honour of his grandmother, who has cancer. He is also paying tribute to late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who passed away in 2022.
In total, Barton will be playing for nine-and-a-half hours and plans to do it without stopping. He has been preparing for months, isolating each Foo Fighters drum track with AI to improve his practice sessions.
“Before you say, ‘That’s impossible,’ I did a six-hour play through last month and feel confident I can go the distance!” he said.
The event will be livestreamed and all proceeds will be donated to the Cancer Research Institute. You can donate to Barton’s fundraising page here.
Meanwhile, last week drummer Josh Freese paid tribute to Hawkins on his first anniversary in Foo Fighters.
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“A year ago today this aired and I got to stop keeping quiet about what had been referred to as “the worst kept secret in the music business” at the time (though I thought we did a pretty good job on our end),” he wrote on Instagram.
He continued: “@foofighters released an hour-long special of us playing some songs at rehearsal. Here’s three clips of the first song. I love the way it came out and am proud of it. I joked that all we really needed was ‘All My Life’ and then move on (because it’s so goddamn good.)
“That being said, I continue to miss Taylor as does the band, his family, friends and the rest of the world,” Freese concluded. “We also continue to try and make the most of the situation by moving forward and doing what we love doing….playing music, honouring Taylor and staying positive.”
The moving post about the late drummer and his time in the band also comes after Freese recently recalled the unexpected moment Dave Grohl asked him to join the band.
“I was on a walk with my wife and some of our dogs, and I go, ‘Ah, Dave just tried calling me like 20 minutes ago’,” he told Rick Beato in a recent interview. “And she’s like, ‘I know why he’s calling you’. I was like, ‘Easy. I’m not thinking that’. I swear to God, that’s not why I thought [he was calling].”
“I said, ‘Hey, did you go record?” Freese continued, before adding that Grohl responded: “‘Yeah, we recorded a bunch of stuff. And I played drums, and I’m really happy with the way it sounds. [I’m] really excited about it… And we had the drummer talk. And we want you to be the guy’.”
Foo Fighters are due to tour in the UK this summer, with the run of dates including two shows at the London Stadium. Find any remaining tickets here.
They’ll head out on the road in North America next month, with tickets for those concerts available here.
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