Some performances carry more history than a single night can hold. When Foo Fighters took the Late Show stage on May 4 for a web-exclusive medley of “This Is a Call” and “Everlong,” they weren’t just playing two songs. They were closing a 31-year chapter.
The medley bookends one of the most storied relationships between a band and a late-night host in television history. “This Is a Call” marked Foo Fighters’ first-ever national TV performance when they played it on Late Show with David Letterman on August 14, 1995. “Everlong” was the last song the band played on that same stage, during Letterman’s final episode on May 20, 2015.
Stephen Colbert introduced the set directly: “Performing a medley of the first song they played on this stage on The Late Show 31 years ago, ‘This Is a Call,’ and the last one on Letterman in 2015, ‘Everlong,’ ladies and gentleman, Foo Fighters.”
The connection between Grohl and Letterman runs deep. After debuting “Everlong” on the show in 1997, the band famously paused their international Sonic Highways tour to perform it again when Letterman returned from open-heart surgery in 2000. Letterman had credited the song with helping him through his five-week recovery. “When we found out he actually liked our music, that he actually was a fan, I was really blown away,” Grohl recalled. “It felt like something we had to do.”
Letterman ultimately introduced Foo Fighters on his final episode as “my favorite band, playing my favorite song.” That moment, and this new medley, sit together as one of the more genuinely moving throughlines in late-night history.
The timing carries extra weight. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs its final episode on May 21, making this Foo Fighters performance almost certainly their last on that stage, closing the full arc of the show’s run across both hosts.
The band is fresh off the April release of ‘Your Favorite Toy’, which also produced “Caught in the Echo” and “Window,” performed during the televised portion of their May 4 appearance. A North American stadium tour launches in August, with support from Queens of the Stone Age.