Foo Fighters play 27-song-set to the 1000 'Learn to Fly' rockers in Italy

In July earlier this year, 1000 Italian Foo Fighters fans gathered in Cesena to perform “Learn to Fly” in an attempt to get Dave Grohl to play in their city (population: 97,131).

The video soon went viral, with the band writing “Ci vediamo a presto, Cesena” on their Twitter - that’s “See you soon, Cesena” in English.

Grohl wasn’t joking around. Late Tuesday night, the Foo’s rolled up to the city and performed a 27-song set for the Rockin’1000, starting with “Learn to Fly”.

After racing through six songs, Grohl addressed the crowd directly, thanking them in a long, heartfelt monologue. Watch below, or read the entire thing below that.

“Tonight, I know, that you know, we’re here for a very special reason. F**kin, thank you. Let me tell you, this has never happened before. This is like the revolution. Who’s in the Rockin’1000? Crazy motherf**kers.

First of all, we have to say thank you to all the musicians who are here tonight. What you guys did, the whole world saw what you did. Million and millions of people. It’s a beautiful thing, Congratulations everybody. I was on vacation and my phone was like 'bling, bling, bling' from all my friends asking 'have you seen this on Youtube?' And I’m like f**k YouTube.

But then, after 100 texts, I looked at one of them and I was like, what the f**k. Then, I f**king cried, because it was crazy. Because, when we make music we make it in our basement, or our studio. And we write songs, and then we make the record and we don't think about the rest of the world.

And then to see you people, singing our song for the whole f**king world, to me, it was the greatest moment of my life.

So, of course, we couldn’t say no. We had to come, You trapped us, we had to come. I hope you do the same thing for U2, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, do it for all rock bands. And if they say no, you know what you say? Vaffanculo!” (Italian for 'f**k you').

This is our last tour, and everybody said you need to play the show next year. We were like, f**k no, we need to play it now.

So tonight, we’re going to play a lot of f**king songs, it’s going to be a long night. So relax, relax a little. We’re going to play songs from the 1st record, and the 2nd record, and the 3rd record, and 4th record… and the 8th record. This is an old song, from the first record, but I’m going to sing it like a love song. It’s called 'Big Me'."

Other highlights included a mash-up of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”, Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”, Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”, and the MTV theme song.

Later, they played “Under Pressure”, bringing up the organiser of the Rockin ‘1000, ‘Mohawk guy’, to play drums. Watch below.

The full setlist, courtesy of Consequence of Sound, as follows:

Learn to Fly

All My Life

Times Like These

Breakout

Something From Nothing

The Pretender

Big Me

Congregation

Walk

Tom Sawyer; Another One Bites The Dust; God Save The Queen; MTV Theme Song; Radio GaGa; Miss You

Cold Day in the Sun

My Hero

Under Pressure (Queen cover) (with ‘Mohawk guy’ on drums)

Miss You (The Rolling Stones cover)

Best of You

I’ll Stick Around

These Days

This Is a Call

In the Flesh? (Pink Floyd cover)

Skin and Bones

Monkey Wrench

Everlong