He was extraordinary.
“Taylor’s sudden death came as a shock to me and the people who knew and loved him. Not only was he a GREAT drummer but his personality was big and shiny and will be sorely missed by all who were lucky to live and work alongside him,” Sir Paul McCartney tweeted this week.
This was just one of many noted condolences offered in an outpouring, as longtime Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins passed away mere hours before the band was set to perform in Bogotá, Colombia on Friday night. Health professionals attempted to revive the unresponsive rocker, to no avail. Hawkins is survived by his wife of 17 years, Alison, and their three children: Oliver, Annabelle and Everleigh. He was 50 years old.
Hawkins was everything but a pretender at the percussionist’s beating post from the time frontman Dave Grohl, who Guns ‘n Roses’ Axl Rose once deemed “the greatest drummer of the ‘90s,” first poached him from a mid-peak Alanis Morissette’s backing band in 1997.
Two years later, Foo Fighters had soared through the alt-rock stratosphere – with Grohl reiterating to Howard Stern that he would pay the radio host “$20,000 if he ever kicked Hawkins out of the band,” ruling the hypothetical an utter impossibility.
Two decades later, Hawkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside his fellow Foo Fighters this past Fall.
According to Colombia’s Attorney General Office’s preliminary toxicology reports, Hawkins – a noted addict whose August 2001 heroin overdose sent him into a two-week coma – had 10 different substances in his body upon being discovered in his hotel room. These included: “THC (Marijuana), tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines and opioids, among others.”
Clips shared en masse over the past week include Hawkins’ spending much of the band’s final show together the previous Sunday partaking in the same antics Grohl and company long-championed.
While many noteworthy drummers tend to operate on the shy side as background players by design, Hawkins was known to vocally sub in on the rare occasions when Grohl’s voice became strained beyond the point of recovery. He’d even regularly trade positions with the Foo Fighters leader, who’d revert back to his drumming roots while Hawkins absolutely belched his trademark, crowd interactivity-inducing rendition of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” – something he did on March 20 for the final time.
“He had a huge heart and a glorious smile,” Stevie Nicks wrote on Twitter. “When he walked in the room, everyone looked up. When he left the room, everyone was sad.”
And everyone will be for the foreseeable future.
“Taylor Hawkins was Foo Fighters’ heart and soul – a bad boy in an age of dull musicians.” – The Irish Times
When his mentor, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain took his own life in April 1994, Grohl anonymously created Foo Fighters – first as a solo effort to “do the thing nobody expected him to do” rather than join an already-established outfit as a drummer for hire, of which there were plenty offers. Reportedly, friendly grunge competitor Pearl Jam, and even Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers reached out to retain Grohl’s services.
By the year 2000, Grohl had improbably risen from the mighty shadow left by his fallen big brother-for-a-bandmate in Cobain, and begun anew with his first, and ultimately long-standing protégé, Hawkins. Days before his demise, the 2005-voted “Best Rock Drummer” by Rhythm Magazine was still proudly admitting before a sold-out crowd that he’d “be delivering pizzas without Dave Grohl.”
With The Grammy Awards airing this Sunday, April 3, and Foo Fighters having previously been set to perform before canceling all their upcoming tour dates and appearances due to the tragic loss, one can presume a respectable tribute will transpire.
While Grohl has yet to offer a personal statement, the band’s, via their official Twitter account, is as follows:
“The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins. His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live with us forever. Our hearts go out to his wife, children, and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.”
“I used to dress like Roger Taylor when I was 10 because I thought he was cool,” Hawkins admitted in a 2014 interview with Loudwire. “In high school I used to dress like Stephen Perkins from Jane’s Addiction because I thought he was cool. You just want to be those guys when you’re that age. Then the older you get you start to find yourself, through all of your musical and life experiences and become who you are. Some amalgamated version of all these influences and stories and haircuts. All of these things you’ve adopted in part of — that have metamorphosed into who you are as a person — musically and personally. We wear our influences pretty heavy on our sleeve…”
Let those out there who wear their Foo Fighters fandom on their sleeves continue to do so. Even those who, like Hawkins, prefer to forgo sleeves before rocking out.
