“This is like a revolution!” — Foo Fighters play for the small Italian town whose invitation to them went viral
It's the story of a rock and roll dream come true.
This summer, 1000 musicians got together in a small Italian city to perform "Learn to Fly" by the Foo Fighters.
They came from all over the country. The oldest was a 65-year-old blues guy; the youngest a 9-year-old drummer. But they all descended on the city of Cesena, near the Adriatic coast. The logistics of getting a thousand people together to perform in sync is quite a feat.
"The drummers were the hardest part of all, because they had to play synchronized and they were in the space as big as a soccer field," Fabio Zaffagnini told the BBC.
Zaffagnini was the brainchild behind this idea, called Rockin' 1000. Zaffagnini says it took about a year to get the project off the ground.
He had one goal in mind. "I actually love rock and roll and I love the Foo Fighters. And I just wanted to see them in my hometown, which is a pretty small city [in northeast Italy]. And I knew that if I wanted to obtain this result I would have to create something special."
And did The Foo Fighters hear that call?
You bet they did.
Frontman Dave Grohl even responded with a video of his own…in Italian.
oembed://https%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DtxEUgZR-luU
The Foo Fighters have honored the request and Zaffagnini's dream. "Tonight were going to see the Foo Fighters in Cesena," Zaffagnini said, "and actually it's unbelievable."
As one fan tweeted "rock and roll can still be a miracle."
UPDATE: Fan footage from the concert uploaded to YouTube shows Grohl thanking the concert goers.
"The whole world saw what you did," he said. "The whole ——- world. Million and millions of people saw what you did. It's a beautiful thing."
Grohl also told the crowd what it was like for him to see the video they made. After recieving hundreds of texts from his friends, he finally decided to go on YouTube and watch it.
"I was like, what the —-? And then I ——- cried, because it was crazy."
Watch the whole speech here (Note: explicit language):