Surf dude Taylor Hawkins was the second frontman of the Foo Fighters

The stadium rock’s biggest grin is gone. Taylor Hawkins, drummer of rock band the Foo Fighters, died this week at the age of 50 in the Colombian capital Bogota, where his band would play that evening. The audience was already waiting at the festival site, but the stage was filled with candles. A cause of death has not been disclosed.

Taylor Hawkins was one of the few to compete with his bandmate Dave Grohl for the title of ‘most likable rock musician’. He wasn’t the first drummer for the Foo Fighters and if you’re honest, not even the best in the band. But those who let former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl sit behind the drum kit come from good families. Hawkins was as cheerful and energetic as he was tech-savvy and perfectionist in his playing. He brought new energy to the band when he joined the Foo Fighters in the late 1990s. More fun too. The drummer with the flowing blond hair quickly grew into the band’s second frontman, who not only played minute-long (too long) drum solos during shows, but sometimes also switched places with Grohl to sing a song. Hawkins was also a singer and guitarist in his own band, Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Ridersand he recently formed the project NHC, with two members of Jane’s Addiction.

The Foo Fighters play ‘Everlong’, 2017:

Oliver Taylor Hawkins was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1972, but perfected his signature surf dude style in California’s Laguna Beach, where he grew up. He was raised with the Bee Gees and the Beatles, his older brother introduced him to Boston, the Eagles and Aerosmith. But it were two British bands that he definitely fell for: Queen and The Police. Hawkins initially picked up the guitar, but when he was ten years old he was allowed to go to a Queen concert, he wanted nothing more than to become a world famous drummer, just like Roger Taylor. “I didn’t sleep for three days after that concert,” he said last year.

Read also this interview with Taylor Hawkins from last year: ‘This is our funky, lighthearted, upbeat album’

infectious bromance

He started out in the band Sylvia (“very bad”), but in 1994 turned to session work: drummer for hire. After a show with Canadian Sass Jordan, he was able to tour with Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette in 1995, who had just released her breakthrough album. Jagged Little Pill had released. You still see Hawkins in the video of super hit ‘You Oughta Know’which at the time came by at least once an hour on MTV.

The Foo Fighters also played at a show in Los Angeles with Morissette. There it immediately clicks between Hawkins and frontman Grohl. “It was like looking in a mirror, we became best friends right away,” Grohl later said. When Grohl called Hawkins in 1997 to ask if he knew of a good drummer, thinking that Hawkins wouldn’t give up on his well-paid stadium tours with Morissette, he said: “Fuck yeah! I do it myself!”

It became an infectious rock bromance. “Dave and I get along the best. But we also get along the least because we are like brothers. He can hit me harder than anyone,” Hawkins said. In interviews, he was the perfect reporter for a good joke from Grohl, which made the two of them laugh the hardest. A wonderful fragment is that of the British Radio X in 2017, in which Grohl tells about the time when actor Christopher Walken asked him whether the emphasis on foo or on fighters had to lie. on fighters, Grohl says wrong on purpose, because he knows what it will sound like if Walken pronounces it that way, then imitates the actor appetizingly. Hawkins constantly encourages his friend, almost as important to the joke as the narrator himself – not much different than their mutual dynamics within the band. “Oh he’s good!”

Grohl and Hawkins on Christopher Walkins:

A year ago, Hawkins spoke to NRC following the latest Foo Fighters album Medicine at Midnight, regularly getting lost in all kinds of anecdotes about other bands and albums. Hawkins is building up to a joke that came out just this month: they took Medicine at Midnight in some sort of haunted house, Hawkins said mysteriously. “We saw strange things happen there, certain things disappeared and reappeared in strange places. There was just a weird vibe. I was happy when we were done.” That turned out to be the plot of Foo Fighters’ own horror comedy film just released this month Route 666a film in which the band members are murdered in the haunted house where they are recording their new album.

Coma after overdose

Not all his fun was harmless. In the summer of 2001, Hawkins slipped into a coma after an overdose in London, nearly marking the end of the band. Grohl said: “I’m doing this for the fucking music, I don’t want to do it anymore if everyone just dies all the time.” According to guitarist Chris Shiflett it was heroin, Hawkins himself denied that, saying he had an addiction to painkillers. Against music magazine Kerrang he said last year that he took “fucking a lot of drugs” to cope with band life, but that the overdose drastically changed his behavior. “I’m not going to preach because I loved drugs. But it was out of my control and I almost passed out.”

Also read: The bare-bones setup of the Foo Fighters livestream was not an anticlimax, but an excellent idea

“That was when I had to decide whether I should remain a child for the rest of my life or become a man,” Hawkins said in the book. This is a call (2011) by Paul Brannigan. “It marked the end of my childhood, and my stupid idea that I was invincible.”

Due to the corona crisis, the band was only now able to tour again with their latest album. “There is so much space in the rhythms, and that gives me the freedom to let it swing a bit,” said Hawkins in NRC . “I remember when I just joined the Foo Fighters and thought, wow… this is a really fucking tough job. The drums never rest! So this is the first time we have some space left. For example, I already have some ideas to add some things in ‘Shame Shame’, just to fuck with it a bit live.”

The Foo Fighters won a total of 12 Grammys. The band was scheduled to perform at the Grammy Awards ceremony next week. They have been nominated in three categories. The band would return to Europe in June, with no confirmed play dates in the Netherlands. Taylor Hawkins leaves behind a wife and three children.