"You knew it was us, right?" Paul McCartney and Guns N' Roses watch Foo Fighters make an emotional return to Glastonbury festival for the least secret 'secret' set ever

(Image credit: Samir Hussein/WireImage)

Foo Fighters made an emotional 'secret' return to Glastonbury festival this evening, June 23, billed as The Churnups, for their first gig in the UK since the passing of late drummer Taylor Hawkins.

"You guys fucking knew it was us the whole time, you knew it was us, right?" Dave Grohl asked the crowd after a raucous version of The Pretender. "We're not good at secrets."

Watched on by Paul McCartney and Guns N' Roses duo Slash and Duff McKagan, Foo Fighters kicked off their hour-long Pyramid Stage set with All My Life from their One By One album, then launched straight into No Son Of Mine, the Motorhead-inspired second single from their tenth album, Medicine at Midnight. An extended break-down during the song saw the sextet tease the crowd with riffs from Metallica's Enter Sandman, and Black Sabbath's Paranoid.

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Following an anthemic Learn To Fly, Grohl's band performed Rescued, the first single from their current album But Here We Are. Later in the set Foo Fighters' frontman introduced "my favourite singer in the world", his daughter Violet, for an emotional version of Show Me How.

"Well, it's been nice to be here for 58 minutes and 22 seconds," he told the crowd with a smile before a set-closing Everlong. "We usually play this one as our way of saying goodbye, because we never like to say goodbye. Because I always figure if you guys come back, we'll come back too. But I already know we're coming back next summer for a whole fucking tour... I would like to thank everyone of you for sticking around for the last 28 years."

To huge cheers around Worthy Farm, Grohl then said, "I'd like to dedicate this song to Mr Taylor Hawkins. So let's sing this one loud as shit... Sing it for T."

Speculation as to the identity of The Churnups on the official Glastonbury event poster hit fever pitch when, in an open letter to Foo Fighters fans at the end of the group's first US tour with new drummer Josh Freese, Grohl wrote, "it feels good to see you, churning up these emotions together."

"Every night, when I see you singing, it makes me sing harder," the letter also reads. "When I see you screaming, it makes me scream louder. When I see your tears, it brings me to tears. And when I see your joy, it brings me joy."

No official announcement has yet been made on the UK tour promised onstage by Grohl.

Watch 'The Churnups' launch their set below:

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.