Foo Fighters Perform The Vaselines’ ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’ Live for the First Time

Foo Fighters played The Vaselines’ “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” for the first time in the band’s history on Saturday night, midway through their headlining set at BottleRock Napa Valley. Dave Grohl handled the lead vocals, howling over an accordion from longtime keyboardist Rami Jaffee, in a raw arrangement that mirrored the version his former band made famous.

The song, originally released on The Vaselines’ 1987 EP Dying for It, became closely associated with Nirvana through their live sets in the early 1990s. Nirvana often performed it under the title “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam,” and their stripped-down rendition on MTV Unplugged in New York, recorded in November 1993 and released posthumously the following year, remains the most widely known. Grohl was behind the drums for that recording.

Foo Fighters have largely avoided direct Nirvana material in their own shows, making this cover a quiet but deliberate shift. It arrives in a set that also included personal dedications: “Aurora” was played for late drummer Taylor Hawkins, and a slowed-down solo arrangement of “Big Me” was delivered for Grohl’s wife, Jordyn Blum. The performance didn’t come with any grand announcement or nostalgic framing, just a simple addition to the setlist that spoke to the band’s current reflective mode.