Dave Grohl finally settled a decades-old musical grudge during Foo Fighters' concert Wednesday night in Memphis, Tennessee — calling to the stage the singer who beat him in a ninth-grade battle of the bands and making him perform a number.
Chet Lott, a respected Kentucky-based singer in his own right — and, according to NBC station WMC, the son of former U.S. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi — was in the audience at FedEx Forum when Foo Fighters began playing the opening vamp to Queen's "Under Pressure."
In video that Lott posted to his Facebook page, Grohl, 46, tells the sellout audience that in 1984 at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, his band entered a battle of the bands.
It's an anecdote Grohl's told before, notably in 2013 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas (adult language warning).
"It was the greatest day of my life. ... If my band can go on to win the battle of the bands, I would surely go on to become the greatest living rock star of all time," he said Wednesday night.
"We knew there were other bands, but we knew they couldn't compete with our band," he says.
Wrong.
"We [expletive] lost the battle of the bands," Grohl says. Then:
"Tonight, the man that beat me in the high school battle of the bands — don't boo him, he's a good man, evidently a better [expletive] musician than I am — if you're around here somewhere, ... get your [expletive] up here!"
The spotlight finds Lott, who — awkward! — is wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt, not one for the band he went to see. As he walks up to the stage from the floor, he exchanges high-fives with fellow audience members along the way.
What follows is five-minute-long rendition of "Under Pressure."
WMC reported that Lott had conciliatory words for Grohl:
"I may have won the battle, but you won the war."
In his Facebook post, Lott called the performance "my 15 minutes of fame."
