News > The White Stripes
White & Grohl Cover Lennon & McCartney
By Johnny Firecloud
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Back on June 2nd, Jack White and Dave Grohl were on hand at the White House for a tribute event for Paul McCartney that included Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder, Emmylou Harris, The Jonas Brothers and Faith Hill, as well as the former Beatle himself. While we saw a nice clip of Obama and friends singing Hey Jude together the day after the event, we’ve been waiting impatiently for video footage of Grohl & White’s involvement, and we finally got our fill today, thanks to PBS.
The event was taped for a PBS special that will air July 28, but we’ve got video of Jack White doing an understated Delta Blues take on the Lennon/McCartney jam Mother Nature’s Son:
Grohl also took the stage and turned out a tongue-in-cheek rendition of McCartney’s Band On The Run (on second thought, it’s not really a goof-off rendition, just Grohl being Grohl). It was a surreal dose of badass to see Stevie Wonder – who was on hand to play We Can Work It Out as well as an Ebony And Ivory duet with McCartney - rocking along from his seat, next to some highly uncomfortable-looking crypt keepers.
For Grohl, an original D.C. local boy, performing at the White House was a homecoming. “I have probably played every club and every basement and every arena and every stadium” in the town, said Grohl, before gushing over one of his primary influences and the dude he voted for: “Paul, you’re definitely my hero. Mr. President, you’re my other hero.”
Big love to TwentyFourBit and ConsequenceOfSound for the heads up!
I appreciate what you’re trying to do with the double &s, but for accuracy you should probably take the “Lennon &” out of the headline.
“Band on the Run” is obviously McCartney-only, of course, so in no way did Grohl cover Lennon & McCartney as the headline indicates. And Lennon had nothing to do with the song “Mother Nature’s Son.” (As you know, they used the “Lennon/McCartney” songwriting credit whether the other person had contributed anything to the song or not.)
oh, lighten up. jack white and dave grohl performed songs by john lennon and paul mccartney. our readers have the brain cells to pick up all the subtleties left out of a 5 word headline.
See what happens when you make a website for music snobs?
“It was a surreal dose of badass to see Stevie Wonder – who was on hand to play We Can Work It Out as well as an Ebony And Ivory duet with McCartney – rocking along from his seat, next to some highly uncomfortable-looking crypt keepers.”
Hahaha, Their suspicious looks at him reminded me so much of Chris Rock’s “Born Suspect” album cover.
I thought the same damn thing.
As much as I dislike his band FF, Dave Grohl owned.
I have that studio recording of Foo Fighters doing Band On The Run. Good stuff.
I’ve watched Dave perform countless times in person…many times with the Foo Fighters playing to jam packed arena’s. He’s always had an internal confidence on stage…no fear of playing out to 20,000 people with his eyes wide open.
I think playing in front of his “hero” and his “other hero” maybe made him a little nervous.
Thanks for sharing the video.
Thanks for sharing , great performance from Dave, he is awesome frontman.