Fans of rock music suffered a great loss on March 25th when Taylor Hawkins, considered
the heart of the Foo Fighters, passed away from drug related causes.
If you ever wanted to know more about the man behind the drums, here's the untold truth
of Taylor Hawkins.
Taylor Hawkins had played with the Foo Fighters since 1997, taking over for the band's first
drummer, William Goldsmith.
The change proved to be a natural fit, as Hawkins had been thriving with the world-renowned
rock band.
The New York Times described his drumming style as an amalgamation of Stewart Copeland
of The Police and Roger Taylor of Queen.
It would've been unlikely for the Foo Fighters to recruit an unknown musician off the street
to play with a superstar like Dave Grohl.
"Say it in drums, Jessica Day.
Me hablo drums."
So they didn't; they hired Taylor Hawkins.
Hawkins had been playing the drums since the age of 10, his musical ambitions set ablaze
after attending a concert by the British powerhouse Queen in 1982.
He told Kerrang!
in an interview posted in 2021,
"It changed everything, and I was never the same because of it.
It was the beginning of my obsession with rock 'n' roll, and I knew that I wanted to
be in a huge rock band."
That Queen concert in September 1982 at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater was an extremely
pivotal moment in the life of young Taylor Hawkins.
He told Kerrang!,
"After that concert, I don't think I slept for three days.
I was just starting to get into the drums and Roger Taylor became my hero."
Queen's drummer became an influence and source of technique to the young Hawkins.
"I wanted to be Roger Taylor and I wanted to be in Queen," Hawkins told "60 Minutes"
in 2014.
Hawkins got to regularly play out that fantasy in a way, during Foo Fighters' 2021-2022 tour.
According to E! News, Hawkins would routinely emerge from behind the drum kit and switch
places with frontman Dave Grohl in order to belt out Queen's powerful ballad "Somebody
to Love."
In 2019, Hawkins got the chance to play with his idol when Taylor played on "Get the Money,"
Hawkins' album with his band the Coattail Riders.
The two monumental drummers struck up a friendship, and when Hawkins died in 2022, Taylor, on
Instagram, likened the loss to that of "a younger favorite brother."
"The exuberance that he played the drums which is why it's so heartbreaking to know that
he won't be doing that anymore."
Other prominent members of the worldwide music community expressed their shock and grief
over the untimely death of Taylor Hawkins.
Liam Gallagher of Oasis posted on Twitter:
"Absolutely devastated to hear the sad news about Taylor Hawkins my thoughts and prayers
are with his family and friends RIP brother."
Mick Jagger himself also weighed in, tweeting,
"So incredibly sad to hear of the passing of Taylor Hawkins.
My thoughts are with his family and the band at this time."
Roger Taylor, the Queen drummer who first inspired Hawkins, wrote,
"He was a kind brilliant man and an inspirational mentor to my son Rufus and the best friend
one could ever have.
Devastated."
Fellow drummer Ringo Starr tweeted,
"God bless Taylor peace and love to all his family and the band peace and love."
The musician Finneas also tweeted his sense of loss, writing,
"So heartbroken to hear about Taylor Hawkins’ passing, what an incredible talent, who didn't
also need to be so kind and generous and cool but was all those things too anyway.
The world was so lucky to have his gifts for the time that it did."
While their spacey, keyboard-driven progressive sound differs greatly from Foo Fighters' brand
of alternative-meets-arena-rock, Yes has a lot in common with Dave Grohl's post-Nirvana
project.
For example, both are inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and both continued on
for years well after they could have feasibly ended thanks in large part to the efforts
of Taylor Hawkins.
The drummer joined Foo Fighters in 1997 as an urgent replacement for the band's previous
drummer William Goldsmith.
According to the Chattanooga Pulse, Hawkins attended high school with Jon Davison, a musician
who played bass for the '90s jam band Sky Cries Mary, sang with the prog-rock group
Glass Hammer, and also played with Roundabout, a Yes tribute band named for one of its best-known
songs.
When Jon Anderson was fired from Yes in 2008 after decades with the band, bassist Chris
Squire started looking around for new singers and thought of Davison, because of Hawkins'
recommendation.
Squire said,
"My friend, Taylor Hawkins, had been telling me for years: 'If you ever need a replacement,
I know exactly the guy.'"
When he wasn't jamming with the Foo Fighters, Taylor Hawkins found the time to make lots
of music with a number of other, lower-profile, musically explorative side projects.
In 2006, 2010, and 2019, Hawkins released solo albums under the moniker Taylor Hawkins
and the Coattail Riders.
The last album involved a slew of incredible musical collaborators like Chrissie Hynde
of the Pretenders, Nancy Wilson of Heart, Joe Walsh of The Eagles, Duff McKagan of Guns
N' Roses, and country singer LeAnn Rimes.
According to Rolling Stone, Hawkins also established Chevy Metal, which the musician called a "'70s
dirt rock cover band" that played covers of semi-obscure songs by some of his favorite
classic rock acts.
Two members of Chevy Metal, bassist Wiley Hodgden and guitarist Mick Murphy, also teamed
up with Hawkins for the power trio Birds of Satan, which put out its one and only album
in 2014.
In 2020, Hawkins put together another three-piece band, NHC, a supergroup named after the initials
of its members: Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hawkins, and
Jane's Addiction bassist Chris Chaney.
Somewhat unlike many of his publicly divorced rock and roll peers, Taylor Hawkins was very
quiet about his offstage life as a long-married husband and father of multiple children.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Taylor married his wife, Alison Hawkins, in 2005.
Hawkins rarely spoke about his spouse but did admit to writing a song about the relationship
on the 2019 Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders album "Get the Money" called "I Really
Blew It."
The marriage of Taylor and Alison Hawkins resulted in three children.
Oldest son Oliver was born in 2008, daughter Annabelle came along the next year, and five
years later, the couple welcomed another child named Everleigh.
Equally reluctant to share much with the media about his children, Taylor's kids did serve
as musical inspiration.
According to Joe Daly, Taylor wrote a song in honor of Annabelle appropriately titled
"Middle Child."
For more than 20 years, Taylor Hawkins was one of the most famous musicians in the world.
He almost always looked like he was having a great time on stage and in videos, bashing
away at the drums.
The man clearly liked being a drummer, and he enjoyed it so much that it was an interest
he was happy to share with regular people far outside of his orbit of celebrity.
On March 22, 2022, per CNN, Foo Fighters were supposed to play at the Asuncionico Festival
in Paraguay, only for the show to be canceled over severely inclement weather.
Nine-year-old Paraguayan drummer Emma Sofia didn't get to see Hawkins' Foo Fighters, so
instead, she acted on a tip from a family friend who let her know the hotel where the
group was staying.
Sofia brought her drum kit, set it up, and played a half an hour's worth of Nirvana and
Foo Fighters songs to a crowd that cheered so loud it caught Hawkins' attention.
He came outside, apologized to the fans for the canceled show, and sought out Sofia.
Hawkins took a photo with her and they chatted for a while.
Sofia's father told CNN,
"She said that day was about to be the worst day of her life and suddenly turned into the
best day of her life."