Foo Fighters drummer known for ‘musical spirit, infectious laughter’

LOS ANGELES — Taylor Hawkins, for 25 years the drummer for Foo Fighters and best friend of frontman Dave Grohl, has died during a South American tour with the rock band. He was 50.

There were few immediate details on how Hawkins died, although the band said in a statement Friday that his death was a “tragic and untimely loss.”

Foo Fighters had been scheduled to play at a festival in Bogota, Colombia, on Friday night.

“His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever,” said a message on the band’s official Twitter account. “Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family.”

The Bogota municipal government issued a statement Saturday that the city’s emergency center had received a report of a patient with “chest pain” and sent an ambulance, though a private ambulance had already arrived at the hotel in northern Bogota.

Health workers tried to revive him, but were unable to do so. It said the cause of death was under investigation.

After Grohl, Hawkins was the most recognizable member of the group, appearing alongside the lead singer in interviews and playing prominent, usually comic, roles in the band’s memorable videos.

Hawkins was Alanis Morissette’s touring drummer when he joined Foo Fighters in 1997.

In Grohl’s 2021 book “The Storyteller,” he called Hawkins his “brother from another mother, my best friend, a man for whom I would take a bullet.”

“Upon first meeting, our bond was immediate, and we grew closer with every day, every song, every note that we ever played together,” Grohl wrote. “We are absolutely meant to be, and I am grateful that we found each other in this lifetime.”

Born Oliver Taylor Hawkins in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1972, Hawkins was raised in Laguna Beach, Calif.

Hawkins told the Associated

Press in 2019 that his early drumming influences included Stewart Copeland of the Police, Roger Taylor from Queen, and Phil Collins, who he said was “one of my favorite drummers ever. You know, people forget that he was a great drummer as well as a sweater-wearing nice guy from the ’80s, poor fella.”

Hawkins is survived by his wife Alison and their three children.