Dave Grohl told Shawn Mendes "don't break a leg" before his festival set in July (18), when he miscalculated an onstage jump.
Video footage taken by fans at the Quebec City Summer Festival in Canada in July showed the There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back hitmaker deciding to jump from the main stage to a lower stage in the middle of performing his hit song Mercy, but he fumbled the landing and briefly ended up on his backside.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday (27Sep18), he revealed that the Foo Fighters frontman, who was watching from the side of the stage, had even jokingly warned him "don't break a leg", a play on the traditional phrase "break a leg", ahead of his set.
After watching footage of his embarrassing moment, the 20-year-old said, "I look like I've never jumped in my life. It looked like my first time ever trying to jump. But you know what he said to me right before I went on stage that I thought was so funny? He said, 'Don't break a leg' which I thought was so great. And then I was like, 'I almost broke my leg.'"
The rocker, who headlined the festival with the Foo Fighters the following day, spoke from experience, given that he broke a leg falling off a stage in Sweden in 2015. They had to cancel a string of performances, including Britain's Glastonbury festival, but returned to touring with Dave sitting on a throne with his leg in a cast.
In the interview, Shawn recalled that he was "amped up" due to Dave's presence and felt the sudden urge to jump to the lower stage.
"There's a massive stage and there's another section of the stage that's a lot lower... a lot lower than I thought it was," he explained. "(There's) this one part where everything goes silent and I jump, and I'm like, 'This is the coolest'. I'm in the air and I'm like, 'This is really loooow' and I fell. I was fully on the ground (but) I hopped up quick."
Shawn previously told Variety in August that he miscalculated the jump and he was mortified that it happened in front of Dave.
