Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has died, per an announcement from the band on Friday. He was 50.
The Dave Grohl-fronted alternative rock outfit was on tour in South America, having played a festival in San Isidro, Argentina on Sunday. The group was scheduled to play another festival in Bogotá, Colombia on Friday night. No cause of death was given.
“The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins,” the message read, which the band posted to social media late on Friday. “His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever. Our hearts go out to his children and his family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.”
Prior to joining Foo Fighters in 1997, replacing original drummer William Goldsmith, Hawkins toured with Alanis Morisette. He played on the Canadian-American singer-songwriter’s Jagged Little Pill tour, performing at festival dates where he rubbed shoulders with Foo Fighters bandleader Dave Grohl.
In his 2021 autobiography, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Grohl referred to Hawkins as “best friend and partner in crime”.
“During his stint as Alanis Morissette’s drummer, long before he became a Foo Fighter, we would bump into each other backstage at festivals all over the world, and our chemistry was so obvious that even Alanis herself once asked him, ‘What are you going to do when Dave asks you to be his drummer?’” Grohl wrote in his best-selling book. “Part Beavis and Butthead, part Dumb and Dumber, we were a hyperactive blur of Parliament Lights and air drumming wherever we went.”
“Tearing through the room like an F5 tornado of hyperactive joy was Taylor Hawkins, my brother from another mother, my best friend, a man from whom I would take a bullet,” Grohl added. “Upon our first meeting, our bond was immediate, and we grew closer with every day, every song, every note that we played together. I am not afraid to say that our chance meeting was a kind of love at first sight, igniting a musical ‘twin flame’ that still burns to this day. Together, we have become an unstoppable duo, onstage and off, in pursuit of any and all adventure we can find. We are absolutely meant to be, and I am grateful that we found each other in this lifetime.”
Born in Fort Worth, TX on February 17th, 1972, Hawkins and his family moved to Laguna Beach, CA in 1976. He joined Foo Fighters in March 1997, following a dispute between Grohl and Goldsmith, after which point Grohl recorded the drum tracks for 1997’s The Colour and the Shape and Hawkins signed on for the corresponding tour.
Throughout his quarter-century career with Foo Fighters, Hawkins occasionally filled in on vocals in addition to drums. His voice can be heard on such tracks as the group’s 2005 single “Cold Day in the Sun” and “Sunday Rain” from 2017’s Concrete and Gold. Recently, Hawkins handled vocals on Foo Fighters’ debut cover of Queen‘s “Somebody To Love” at a January 2021 surprise show at Los Angeles, CA’s the Canyon Club.
“He came into a band that was pretty scrappy, in general, and kind of acclimated to that for a second, and then was like, ‘Hang on a second, what if we become good?’” Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel said of Hawkins in Rolling Stone last September. “That was Taylor’s thing, like, ‘Why don’t we learn how to be better as a band and pay more attention to what we’re doing live?’”
Outside of Foo Fighters, Hawkins mounted his own solo career beginning in 2006. Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders featured his former Alanis Morisette bandmate Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) and released three albums, hosting collaborations with Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor, Perry Farrell, and more.
Most recently, Hawkins took part in NHC, a supergroup featuring Dave Navarro and Chaney. The band’s debut album is expected this year.
“NHC was the first time any of us have been in a situation writing-wise where we just throw the ball,” Hawkins told Rolling Stone last year. “It’s like playing catch, literally. A writing session or recording session for us is all three of is playing baseball in a backyard.”
Hawkins is survived by his wife and three children.
[H/T Rolling Stone]