There are super fans — and then there’s Fabio Saffagnini, the Foo Fighters maniac who gathered a thousand musicians to perform the band’s hit song Learn to Fly.
Saffagnini organized the event, called Rockin 1000, to try to convince the five-piece to perform in his city of Cesena, Italy. The performance that resulted is a sight to see (and hear): a deluge of people of all ages, singing, playing guitar, drums, and bass in near-perfect unity.
While it took Saffagnini a year to put the event together, it worked. Today, Dave Grohl told the city in a video that his band will make a stop to their city.
“Hello Cesena, I’m David,” Grohl said in the video in Italian. “It’s David. Forgive me that I don’t speak Italian, only a little. This video, how beautiful, so beautiful, thank you so much. We are coming, I promise, we’ll see you soon. Thank you so much. Love you all, bye.”
We can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Grohl to see such an elaborate performance of his song from 1999. While he’s toured the globe, played shows in front of tens of thousands, worked with Nirvana, met countless celebrities and lived the life of a rock star, we’re sure that this video hit him — as it did us — on a visceral level.
In the video, organizer Fabio Zaffagnini explained the difficulties of putting together the project.
“Italy is not a place where dreams can easily come true but it’s a land of passion and creativity,” said Zaffagnini. “And so what we did here is just a huge, huge miracle. I’ve been working on this fucking project for one year, waking up every morning to figure out how to make it real and this is all that we got. 1000 people. 1000 rockers that came from all over the nation at their own expenses and they just did it for one song. Your song.”
