Foo Fighters to headline Reading and Leeds 2012?

(Image credit: Robb D. Cohen ./Retna Ltd./Corbis)

With hours to go before this year's Reading and Leeds Festival line-ups are unveiled, we're doing a spot of festival maths in the TG office and we reckon there's a good chance we'll see a Foo Fighters Reading announcement imminently.

This weekend, a virtual tape recorder appeared on the Foos' homepage allowing fans to stream their entire performance from the 1995 festival. Grohl has long been a fan of Reading, having played there numerous times with Nirvana, Foo Fighters and Them Crooked Vultures.

Foo Fighters' debut performance in the Melody Maker tent in 1995 has become the stuff of urban-legend, with anyone who's feasibly old enough to have attended claiming they were there.

As thousands of fans crammed their way into the tent to catch their first glimpse of Grohl's post-Nirvana project, concerns over the crowd's safety grew, and the band very nearly got bumped to the top of the main stage.

As expected, the place erupted, with reports of fans climbing the tent poles. Grohl told the Festival in 2009,

"When we were asked to come over and play it, I thought, 'Well, why don't we... let's play the second stage. I don't wanna play the big stage, it's like our first gig…."

"We did a couple of songs, it got kinda hairy. It was really hot, and the security guys were being carried out 'cause they were passing out. It was nuts, it was super-fun!"

Super-fun indeed, you can check out the stream of Foo Fighters' 1995 Reading Festival performance at www.foofighters.com.

Reading and Leeds Festivals take place 24 to 26 August. The first line-up announcements are due later today, with tickets on sale from 7.15pm.

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Matthew Parker

Matt is a freelance journalist who has spent the last decade interviewing musicians for the likes of Total Guitar, Guitarist, Guitar World, MusicRadar, NME.com, DJ Mag and Electronic Sound. In 2020, he launched CreativeMoney.co.uk, which aims to share the ideas that make creative lifestyles more sustainable. He plays guitar, but should not be allowed near your delay pedals.