Few characters in rock’n’roll can lay the claim to greatness that attaches to Dave Grohl. As the drummer in Nirvana he was one-third of the most important group of the 1990s.

He is still a world-class drummer — that’s him all over the current Queens Of The Stone Age album — but he has now forged a new role as singer, guitarist and leader of Foo Fighters. Their fourth album, One By One, topped the British chart last month, and they are now selling out bigger venues than Nirvana ever got around to playing.

Yet Grohl is hardly a household name. He rarely draws attention to himself for any reason other than the excellence of his music. But were anyone tempted to think that his modest profile might mean a lack of front as a performer, they would have been disabused of the idea within the first moments of Friday night’s Foo Fighters gig at Wembley.

Grohl initially stood stock still singing the opening sequence of All My Life, while plucking the menacing, staccato guitar riff. Then, as the other three members of the group piled in around him, he exploded into action, legs, arms and head all pumping and shaking while his voice rose from an urgent croak to a full-blooded roar. As the musicians rolled out the even more colossal riff of My Hero, the audience, which ranged from grunge veterans to pre-teen kids for whom Nirvana now represents Year Zero in pop, could be seen exhibiting similar spasms of excitement.

“I don’t understand how those guys in Oasis just stand around; I have to shake my ass!” Grohl announced during one of several between-song chats in which he revealed an upbeat charm that couldn’t be further removed from the anger and angst associated with the doyens of heavy rock. He also lavished praise on drummer Taylor Hawkins, a player cast in his leader’s granite-jawed image and with a similarly lean, propulsive style.

It wasn’t all hell-for-leather — they tapped into a more reflective vein with Hey, Johnny Park! and a stripped-down Tired Of You, which Grohl invested with real soul. But this gig rocked, and never more so than when Grohl went walkabout while the band maintained the furious riff of Monkey Wrench. All the right moves — none of the tragedy.

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