RIP Taylor Hawkins
It could not have been easy being a drummer in Dave Grohl's band.
We lost Taylor Hawkins last night. He's the guy who took over that stool. A whirling dervish back there. He played the drums like Animal from the Muppets. Even Grohl soon realized his backside was more than covered. You couldn't take your eyes off either of them. Foo Fighters are as unimaginable without Hawkins as they would be without Grohl. Theirs was an intense rock and roll friendship, forged in vans and dingy clubs, climbing the ladder, and slowly reaching the pinnacle of stadiums. Their band became one of the biggest in the world. We might never see a straight ahead rock and roll band this popular again. This very well could be the end of an era.
By all accounts Hawkins was everything rock and roll is supposed to be. He was a rock star who never stopped being a rock fan. And he loved and devoured it all. From Lemmy to the Bee Gees. From Sabbath to Rick Springfield. From Joan Jett to Stevie Nicks. He embraced them all. To Hawkins, everybody who sang and played was a brother and sister. There was no snobbery in him.
Tales of how humble and approachable he was are legion. Along with being one of rock's best drummers, he was surely its most joyful. He knew how great his job was, and he smiled accordingly. The only thing he loved more than listening to music was playing it.
And he just looked like a rock star. Jagger-thin and crushingly handsome. Hyper-caffeinated. The kind of guy who doesn't so much enter a room as take it over. He was 50 years old but always seemed younger. The kind of spirt that seemed ageless. Frequently shirtless onstage, and wearing a pair of ghastly colored Bermuda shorts that could remind you of Eddie Van Halen's "frankenstrat". He was our much needed reminder that the phrase is "playing music", not working it. "Get yourself a job where you never look at the clock" is what my father told me. Well, I failed at that one, but Taylor didn't.
When you need somebody with big enough balls to stand in front of Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones to sing "Rock and Roll" at Wembley Stadium, or to front the surviving members of Queen and sing Freddie's parts, you call Taylor Hawkins. Because, oh yea, he was also a great singer.
A devoted husband and father. Maybe that means more than the rest. Scratch that. It does mean more than all the rest. He might have been our star, but he was their light.
At this point we don't know anything. He had battled drugs in the distant past. But then again, maybe his heart was simply too big for his chest. Maybe he had given everything he had to give and just wanted to rest a while.
Everybody is fumbling around keyboards today, trying to find the right words. For my generation, we grew up with rock and roll having the power of a freight train. It drove us forward and gave us our own individual soundtrack. It was huge. It was everywhere. It would never die.
And then it sorta did. It was gone from the radio. Record companies and streaming services made it next to impossible for new bands to do anything but starve. The Foos were one of the last under the wire. Risen from the ashes of another tragedy....the death of Cobain. Old school arena rock...fist pumping and everybody knowing the words and inviting fans onstage to play with them and the band, even now, exchanging crazed glances onstage that said "can you believe this?"
And now, all these years later, Dave Grohl has to bury another brother.
I hope Hawkins realized the mark he made. I hope he realized that he changes lives. That seemingly everybody who crossed paths with him left with a smile and a story to tell. I hope he died as happy as he made the rest of us.
I hope rock and roll realizes what it lost too. I hope it finds the strength it needs to reach for that volume control and turn it up to 11, and somehow blast its way back into the ears of kids who desperately need a dose.
I hope Taylor's legacy brings as many smiles as he did.
In a bit...
--tf