Watch Billy Idol front Foo Fighters to cover Sex Pistols classic Pretty Vacant

Billy Idol became the latest rock star to temporarily front the Foo Fighters when he joined Dave Grohl's band onstage at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass festival to cover the Sex Pistols Pretty Vacant.

The performance took place on Sunday night (September 3), on the closing night of the Labor Day weekend festival in Aspen, Colorado.

Idol, who has been performing Sex Pistols song in his side-band Generation Sex alongside former Pistols members Steve Jones and Paul Cook, and was supporting Foo Fighters with his own band, took lead vocals on the track, which was song five on the Foo Fighters' 17-song setlist at the festival.

Watch footage of the performance below, with additional side of stage footage courtesy of Idol's guitarist, and former Stimulator frontman, Billy Morrison.

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This is not the first time Billy Idol has been invited to guest with Foo Fighters. In 2018, after being introduced by Dave Grohl as a "bad ass motherfucker", Idol joined the band onstage at the Welcome To Rockville festival to sing lead vocals on a cover of John Lennon's Gimme Some Truth.

Foo Fighters are no strangers to having guest vocalists at live shows. Last month, during their August 12 headlining set at the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco, the band were fronted, briefly, by Canadian jazz-pop smoothie Michael Bublé for a performance of his 2009 single Haven’t Met You Yet.

That collaboration came about as the logical conclusion of a long-running Foo Fighters 'bit', whereby the band have been playing songs by artists who have previously retained the services of their 'new' drummer Josh Freese.

Giving a shout out to Bublé for the entertaining cameo, Dave Grohl told the festival crowd, "this bad-ass motherfucker - and I’m not even kidding - flew in today from Argentina to fucking sing that song to you guys. Because there’s no such thing as taking a joke too far."

Artists

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.