As tributes pour in for the late, great Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins following the shocking news of his passing, fans have been quick to pay homage to both his good nature and his wicked sense of humour.
Chief among them is his and the band's repeated trolling of the Westboro Baptist Church over the years.
The notoriously homophobic church has become infamous throughout the years for their picketing of LGBTQ-friendly events and have targeted the Foo Fighters on several occasions, routinely descending on the parking lot outside the band’s shows wielding their hate-filled signs.
Never ones to let such injustices go unpunished however, the Foos hit back at the WBC on numerous occasions over the years, turning up to troll the hate-preachers with their own counter-protests whenever they pass through the group’s home state of Kansas, and even penning their own tongue-in-cheek country ballad extolling the virtues of gay rights.
In 2011, the Church decided to picket a Foo Fighters show in Kansas City after claiming the band were a tool of the devil because of their song 'Keep It Clean (Hot Buns)', a gay love song used to promote their Wasting Light tour.
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The Foos responded to this by hiring a flatbed truck and performed their own counter-protest, turning up to perform 'Keep It Clean' right in front of the Westboro Baptist Church while dressed as truckers and cowboys. "Driving all night, got a hankering for something," Grohl crooned during the impromptu gig. "Think I'm in the mood for some hot man muffins... Mmmm, sounds so fine, yes indeed."
But that wasn’t all. The band returned to Kansas City in 2015 and were once again set upon by the hate-preachers who came out to protest their show. But this time, instead of staging a concert the band simply turned up to their event blasting Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ from the back of a pickup truck, turning the event into an impromptu dance party and drowning out the Church’s hate-filled messages with a good old-fashioned rickroll.
To top it all off, the band went after them once again in 2021, turning up once more on the back of a flatbed truck to drive protestors away, this time decked out in full disco regalia and performing a rendition of the Bee Gees classic ‘You Should Be Dancing’ as the truck parked up outside their protest and blocked their hate-filled signs.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I got something to say. Because you know what? I love you! I do,” Grohl told the protesters as the music played. “The way I look at it, I love everybody. That’s what you’re supposed to do… I deliver all of my love, and you shouldn’t be hating. You should be dancing!”
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The Foos have always been legendary for their sense of humour, and though Grohl tends to get the accolades Taylor Hawkins has always been a huge part of the band’s identity. Rest in Peace Taylor, the music world – and the Westboro Baptist Church – will never be the same again.
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Topics: Music, Foo Fighters
Tom Sanders