In a move that left Sabbath diehards dazed, Foo Fighters frontman and self-confessed metal obsessive Dave Grohl was conspicuously absent from Black Sabbath’s “Back To The Beginning” farewell gig in Birmingham — a show that was billed as sacred ground for the genre’s most fervent believers.
The whispers began when Grohl was spotted in London the week of the show, palling around in the Royal Box at Wimbledon with wife Jordyn Blum, actor John Cena, Olivia Rodrigo, England manager Thomas Tuchel, and Olympic icon Tom Daley. Speculation hit fever pitch that Grohl — who once said “almost every band that made it big in the ‘90s… owe a debt to [Sabbath]” — was surely going to pull a last-minute appearance onstage. After all, this is the same man who gushed with schoolboy glee when Geezer Butler joined Foo Fighters onstage in Birmingham last year.
But when the lights dimmed at the Aston legends’ curtain call on July 5, Grohl wasn’t even in the building. Instead, he was 120 miles away, watching Irish punk poets Fontaines D.C. and Belfast firebrands Kneecap bring Finsbury Park to its knees.
Fontaines D.C., who sold out their largest-ever headline gig in minutes, delivered a 23-song set packed with cuts from their new album Romance. As ever, they invited Kneecap onstage mid-set to perform “Better Way To Live”, with Grian Chatten reprising his guest verse — a moment now tradition for fans in the know.
The show ended with a jarring political statement beamed across the stage screens: “Israel is committing genocide. Use your voice.” A divisive, deliberately unignorable message in a charged geopolitical climate.
While metal icons clung to nostalgia, Grohl — the man who famously never stops moving — chose to witness something modern, something raw, something difficult. In doing so, he didn’t just miss Sabbath’s goodbye — he redefined what showing up actually means.
