‘There goes my hero, he’s ordinary…’
The above are lyrics from the popular Foo Fighters song ‘My Hero’ – and they sum up Taylor Hawkins’s life perfectly. He was everything that you would want from a modern day rock star, but at the heart of it, he was a man that pleased millions. He was someone that, despite his stardom, was always a calm, (very) cool head in any room.
In an interview with Radio X, he joked, saying “I don’t spend my money, I let my kids and my wife spend my money”. This tells you all you needed to know about the man sat behind the skins of one of the biggest rock bands in history.
He began his career in music with Alanis Morissette’s band in 1995, and after Dave Grohl fell out with the then Foos drummer William Goldsmith in 1997 during the recording of second album ‘The Colour And The Shape’, going on to re-record most of the drums on the record himself, he thought his friend Hawkins would be too happy playing with Morissette to join the Foos, until Taylor, by his own account, phoned him up and told him “I’m your drummer – that’s it”.
Though Foo Fighters were already two albums old when Hawkins arrived for the third, 1999’s ‘There Is Nothing Left To Lose’, he swiftly became the relatable life and soul of the band, key to both its tight family dynamic – he and Grohl were clearly very close from the off – and its essence. Foo Fighters are a band that rock hard but not too seriously, and a group borne of the cheery drummer of a world-beating rock band proving himself as frontman and songwriter. In both senses, Hawkins was the Foos.
The multi-talented Hawkins was much more than just a drummer to the Foos. He was instrumental in co-writing some of their biggest hits, such as ‘Best Of You’, ‘Learn To Fly’ and ‘All My Life’. He also had a number of side projects while involved with the Foo Fighters, such as Taylor Hawkins And The Coattail Riders, which had three albums between 2006 and 2019 and he then went on to form a rock covers band called Chevy Metal, which would morph into The Birds Of Satan for a 2014 album.
As tributes pour in from all across the music world for this irreplaceable star, lets use this corner of our world to think about just what he gave to us, and what moments have been enhanced because of him and the group he held so close.
RIP Taylor, 1972-2022.
CScottJourno 