Dave Grohl paid tribute to the late Dimebag Darrell Wednesday (May 1) night during the Foo Fighters 2024 tour kickoff show at the Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas by dedicating "My Hero" to the late Pantera guitarist.
A video shot by a fan shows Grohl starting to play the 1998 rock hit, initially saying, "This one's for everybody," but then he has a second thought. "Actually, you know what, since we're here in Dallas, I'm gonna dedicate this one to an old friend. He lived around here. His name is Dimebag Darrell. How 'bout that? It's called 'My Hero.' We'll sing it for Darrell."
Dimebag Darrell was the co-founder of the metal band Pantera with his brother drummer Vinnie Paul. Despite being one of the heaviest bands around at the time, Pantera found mainstream success. Its 1994 album, Far Beyond Driven, topped the Billboard 200 for one week in April of that year. Tragically, in December 2004, Darrell was shot to death while performing with his other band, Damageplan, during a show at a Columbus, Ohio nightclub.
In Dallas, Grohl initially played and sang the song solo before he was joined by the crowd in a sing along and eventually the rest of the Foos.
Dimebag Darrell wasn't the only late musician Grohl and company honored during Wednesday night's show. Late in the set they also dedicated "Aurora" to their own fallen comrade, late drummer Taylor Hawkins. He died in March 2022 while the band was on tour in Bogota, Colombia. According to a toxicology test, multiple drugs were detected in Hawkins' system. He was only 50 years old.
Along with the tributes, the Foo Fighters dipped deep into their catalog during the 24-song, two-hour-and-45-minute set, with four songs from their latest album, 2023's But Here We Are, as well as several Foos classics and covers.
The band played a bit of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" during the middle of "No Son of Mine" and did a medley featuring the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage," the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop," Devo's "Whip It" and Nine Inch Nails' "March of the Pigs." In "Nothing at All," they offered a bit of the Beatles' "Blackbird" as well as their own "I'll Stick Around."
The Foos also played some of their biggest hits, including "Times Like These," "Learn to Fly," "Monkey Wrench," and the show-closing "Everlong."
The next stop on the band's tour is Friday (May 3) night in New Orleans at Jazz Fest. Foo Fighters are set to play two other festival dates (Shaky Knees in Atlanta on May 5 and Welcome to Rockville in Daytona Beach, Fla.) and a few U.S. headline dates (May 7 in Raleigh, N.C. and May 9 in Charlotte, N.C.) before heading overseas for a series of dates in the U.K.
They return to the U.S. for a stadium tour starting with a pair of dates at Citi Field in New York on July 17 and 19 and wrap the tour Aug. 18 at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.
