Michael Gudinski tried to get Bruce Springsteen to play a Gold Coast stadium show

HOW many gigs have the Commonwealth Games cost live music fans on the Gold Coast? With our stadiums out of bounds to concert promoters this summer, the Coast’s loss has been Brisbane’s gain.

IF you’re a music fan grumpy at being inconvenienced by planning for April’s Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, you might want to stop reading now!

Hosting the Games might very well have cost us the chance to see Beatles great Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran or even Foo Fighters rock a stadium here instead of in Brisbane.

Frontier Touring boss Michael Gudinski has been trying to secure the Gold Coast another stadium show since he brought the Foo Fighters to Metricon in 2011. Picture: Josie Hayden

Leading Australian promoter Michael Gudinski, who christened Metricon Stadium as a live music venue when he brought the Foo Fighters and Tenacious D to town in 2011, has been trying to line up another stadium act for Gold Coast audiences ever since.

The Gold Coast Suns’ home ground Metricon Stadium is being converted into a venue for the Commonwealth Games. Picture: Richard Gosling

“Bruce Springsteen loves the Gold Coast. He always stays on the Coast when he’s here,” Gudinski says.

“I tried to get him to do Metricon last time (on his February 2017 tour) but he wasn’t interested. He doesn’t like playing stadiums.”

Gudinski admits he’s reluctant to take a chance on bringing a major international act to the Coast for a stadium show on a school night but would happily bypass Brisbane to bring a star our way on a Saturday or long weekend.

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl at Brisbane’s Lang Park stadium on Thursday night. Picture: AAP Image/Josh Woning.

Sadly, with Metricon and Robina Stadiums out of bounds since the footy seasons ended last year so they could be fitted out for the Games, we’ll never know what might have been.

Could Gudinski have swung McCartney, Foo Fighters or Ed Sheeran’s summer tours our way and saved us a trip up the highway to hell to see them in Brisbane? Possibly.

The Foo Fighters set up camp at Sheraton Mirage on the Gold Coast when they played Brisbane in 2015 but stayed in Byron Bay instead this time around.

Gold Coasters had to travel up the highway to hell to Brisbane on Thursday to see the Queensland leg of Foo Fighters’ current Australian run. Picture: AAP Image/Josh Woning.

There were no Johnny Depp-style stars side of stage for Thursday’s show but Wolfmother star Andrew Stockdale joined the band for the night’s best cover — David Bowie and Queen’s rousing Under Pressure.

Broncos coach Wayne Bennett was also there — in body, if not spirit — in a box seat.

For the record, neither of the Foo Fighters gigs at Lang Park (in 2015 and on Thursday) have delivered the same snap, crackle and pop as their sold-out stand at Metricon. Just sayin!

Tenacious D do their best to out-rock Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters on acoustic guitars during their 2011 set at Metricon Stadium. Picture: Jerad Williams.

The dearth of hits in the group’s arsenal made them sound a little too formulaic at times as the set nudged the three-hour mark (Grohl’s banter dragged on for too long between some songs).

There was no sweating the small stuff for most of the 40,000-strong crowd, who gave the Fooeys’ pub rock on steroids singalong the thumbs up, but others will have trouble escaping that rocking refrain: “I’m done, done and I’m on to the next one.”

FOO FIGHTERS SETLIST

Brisbane, January 25, 2018

Run

All My Life

Learn to Fly

The Pretender

The Sky Is a Neighborhood

Rope

Sunday Rain

My Hero

These Days

Walk

Let It Die

Congregation

Arlandria

Breakout

Dirty Water

Under My Wheels (Alice Cooper cover)

Under Pressure (Queen, Bowie cover with guest vocalist Andrew Stockdale)

Monkey Wrench (with fan Joey on guitar)

Best of You

Encore:

Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners

Blackbird (The Beatles cover)

Times Like These

Everlong