The Foo Fighters, a thousand musicians and a leadership story that will blow your mind
Imagine this.
You have a goal that you desperately want to achieve, which you have spent every waking moment of the last 12 months working towards. All of a sudden you find yourself standing in the middle of a field in Italy in front of a thousand people - each one of them fervently screaming, encouraging and inspiring you to achieve your goal.
This is a different but remarkable story that will blow your mind and challenge you to think differently.
Just under one year ago, a seemingly impossible event took place, an event that spread across the globe. It started with a crazy idea, a simple vision and it was followed through to the end with clear communication, impeccable planning and a whole bunch of followers all of whom were recruited with right skills to achieve the unthinkable. This is a story that demonstrates what can be achieved with strong leadership, deep motivation, an outstanding group of followers and unity.
This article is about leadership with a difference, a journey of 1000 Italian musicians who gathered in a small Italian town called Cesena in an attempt to get the Foo Fighters (who just happen to be my favourite band) to perform a concert for them.
The Foo Fighters were founded by former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl and are one of the most successful rock bands of all time with four Grammy award winning albums to their name. The Foo Fighters constantly fill the world’s largest arenas such as England’s Wembley Stadium and entertain hundreds of thousands of fans in big cities including London, New York, Sydney, Paris and Berlin. Not to mention performing for the US President, Barack Obama at the White House! It’s fair to say the small town Cesena wasn’t on their touring radar.
An Italian man who is a former Marine Biologist, named Fabio Zaffagnini had a different idea. His vision was to get the Foo Fighters to perform a concert for the people of Cesena - his home town. Such was Zaffagnini’s passion, he set about making a plan to get them there!
I was recently privileged enough to be the first Australian to interview this inspirational leader about this journey.
“If you really want something, you have to ask – and it works better if there are a thousand people screaming behind you”
During our Skype interview, Zaffagnini told me how he took inspiration from the unlikeliest of places: the 2003 movie called School of Rock.
“My inspiration was a movie I saw over ten years ago. It was School of Rock starring Jack Black” said Zaffagnini. In the bonus feature, lead Actor Jack Black is shown successfully pleading to Led Zeppelin (renowned for not permitting the use of their music in movies) to allow the use of their song titled the ‘Immigrant Song’.
“He (Jack Black) says if you really want something you have to be ready to get down on your knees to ask” said Zaffagnini. “And it works better if there are a thousand people behind you screaming. This number of one thousand remained in my mind” he explained.
So Zaffagnini set about gathering together 1,000 local musicians, ‘common people’ in his words, to perform a Foo Fighters trademark song ‘Learn to Fly’.
Zaffagnini was successful in assembling the crowd (he called it Rockin’ 1000) at a field in Cesena and he filmed the event. The video was uploaded to the internet and quickly went viral – to this point the video has been viewed over 31 million times through-out the world.
“The idea was just to ask the Foo Fighters to come and play”
“I was listening to the Foo Fighters song on the radio and thought it’d be very cool to see them in my city” says Zaffagnini on the humble origins of the event. But while one’s man vision is clear and uncomplicated, starting the road to achieving that vision was not easy.
What the Rockin’ 1000 team accomplished was astounding considering the logistics required in bringing 1,000 people together to play music in unison. The project was a full year in the making.
“The first thing I did was to build up a team of talented people with very big motivation in their everyday life”
Step one in Zaffagnini’s plan was to pull together a team that could help him with logistics required in terms of bringing his crazy idea together.
“The first thing I did was to build up a team of talented people with very big motivation in their everyday life. It was a team of friends on one side but a team of really fantastic professionals on the other side, so I started to look at the skills that were needed to build this whole thing” he explained.
“I asked a project manager for events, a video maker, a social media manager, a sound engineer, a press agent and a commercial agent and together we made the plan for the whole project” said Zaffagnini. Once the team was established the planning phase alone took five months.
Step two was the launch of a fundraising website. Over 50,000 Euros was required just to cover expenses and equipment.
With his idea gaining momentum, the team then took on the tough task of recruiting volunteer musicians, asking prospective participants to send in audition videos of themselves playing.
An interesting alignment to the corporate world is the fact that the use of video based resumes, applications and interviews is gaining momentum faster than you might think. No longer are these tools reserved for music, film or television auditions.
Zaffagnini was sure to focus on nurturing his first followers, treating them as equals and empowering his team members to own their areas of responsibility. “The first followers are crucial to a movement, a movement is not just about the leader, it’s about people, when there’s no people, there’s no movement and first followers are the ones that become the first influencers.” Zaffagnini explained - his passion on this topic obvious.
“… it’s not just about the Foo Fighters anymore”.
Throughout the process, Zaffagnini told me that his team ran into countless roadblocks. The majority he was able to overcome by remaining focused on the central cause, staying true to the big picture and sticking to the plan. “We had a significant problem funding. The fundraising campaign was almost over and we had only raised 20 thousand of the 40 thousand Euros we needed. There was only a couple of weeks to the end of the campaign”.
These roadblocks quickly became small speed humps as the true meaning of this journey came to light for the people of Cesena. “Everybody started to say you are not going to make it, but we started to look at each other and said come on we’ve raised a lot of money, we almost have all the musicians on board… it’s not just about the Foo Fighters anymore” he explained.
“It was about creating something huge from the bottom up and by doing the video I knew we could somehow make it.”
“We try to be very respectful, giving faith and respect to obtain faith and respect”
Whilst many seemed confident that the event would be a success under his leadership, Zaffagnini was not always so self-assured. At many points throughout the process he questioned his decisions and his leadership. At these times Zaffagnini recalled having to work extremely hard to not let his fear get the best of him.
“Any fear? Yes, of course. I was scared like hell all the time. Whether it was about having enough money, not making the right plans from an economical point of view, maybe it would cost a lot more than we planned, we were not actually sure the musicians would come and the weather forecasts were saying that it would rain on those days. I was scared like hell!”
“I was scared all the time because it was something that wasn’t certain and the closer we got to the event the more scared we were”
Zaffagnini’s ability to get so many people involved in his journey and overcome any obstacles was simple “we try to be very respectful, giving faith and respect to obtain faith and respect” he confidently explained.
“I find it such nonsense because if we had rules to follow to become successful all of us would be successful”
With his respectful manner and his natural energy, Zaffagnini reluctantly provides advice to business leaders. Reluctantly because, as he modestly claims, he is not necessarily the right person to give business advice given he’s not a rich business man…
“When I look at all those articles on the internet saying ‘The five ways to make money’, ‘The ten ways to communicate’, ‘The twenty ways to be successful’, I find it such nonsense because if we had rules to follow to become successful all of us would be successful. It doesn’t work that way, you may have good practices to follow but this doesn’t ensure you are going to make a lot of money” he explained.
“There’s no rules because if you want to innovate you have to follow unbeaten paths. If you follow paths that are already followed by other people there’s no way you can innovate, so just try to get inspiration everywhere even from fields that are completely outside your world and this will always help you find other ways.”
“So, of course, we couldn’t say no. We had to come, you trapped us, we had to come” Dave Grohl
Soon after the video of Zaffagnini and his 1,000 strong band of Italian musicians was posted on social media, Foo Fighters lead singer, Dave Grohl, began to receive text messages from his friends about the video – too many to ignore.
Of his own admission, Grohl broke into tears of disbelief in seeing Zaffagnini’s video and, much to the people of Cesena’s excitement, he quickly posted a reply to the small town confirming that he and the Foo Fighters would pay a visit!! This moment alone changed Cesena for ever and at this point the plan was already a success with the story even gaining interest from the world's leading media outlets including CNN.
True to their word The Foo Fighters turned up in Cesena and performed a 27-song set for this small Italian town with their customary knack for making every audience member feel like the band members best mates. After opening the night with crowd favourite “Learn to Fly”! Grohl addressed the crowd directly with one of his comments in a heartfelt thank you “So, of course, we couldn’t say no. We had to come, you trapped us, we had to come”.
During the performance, Zaffagnini was ‘crowd surfed’ up on to the stage where he was given a reception like no other, with thousands of people screaming his name.
However, as he recalled to me during our conversation, his personal highlight was not about him, it was many months prior whilst getting through the hardest part of the rehearsals “That moment on stage was cool, but the biggest moment I had in the whole experience was during the first rehearsals by the drummers - we knew that part was going to be the hardest part to get right - and in that precise moment we realized that we could really make it and so we started to cry and hug each other because we realized that this whole thing was going to happen after more than one year of work. That was the happiest moment of the whole thing…. probably of my entire life.”
Thank you for reading this article, I welcome any comments or questions on how this story aligns to the corporate world. A massive thank you to Fabio Zaffagnini for being so generous with his time and of course the Foo Fighters for engaging with their fans and treating them as equals.
Check out the ‘Learn to Fly - Foo Fighters Rockin' 1000 Official Video’ which now has over 31 million views (growing by at least one view per day due to the fact my three year old daughter asks me to play it to her every night before bed!) and please take a look at the Rockin 1000 team’s next journey as Zaffagnini continues to lead the way on an unbeaten path.
