South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Drummer’s ‘musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on’
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 no 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 that was also emailed to reporters.
Police vehicles, an ambulance and fans were gathered outside the hotel in northern Bogota where Hawkins was believed to have been staying.
“It was a band I grew up with. This leaves me empty,” Juan Sebastian Anchique, 23, told Associated Press as he mourned Hawkins outside the hotel.
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 videos and their recent horror-comedy film, “Studio 666.”
Hawkins was Alanis Morrissette’s touring
drummer when he joined Foo Fighters in 1997. He played on the band’s biggest albums including “One by One” and “On Your Honor,” and on hit singles including “My Hero” and “Best of You.”
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.”
Tributes poured out on social media for Hawkins.
“God bless you Taylor Hawkins,” Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello said on Twitter along with a photo of himself, Hawkins and Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Ferrell. “I loved your spirit and your unstoppable rock power.”
Born Oliver Taylor Hawkins in Fort Worth Texas in 1972, Hawkins was raised in Laguna Beach, California. He played in the small Southern California band Sylvia before landing his first major gig as a drummer for Canadian singer Sass Jordan.
Hawkins told the AP in 2019 that his early drumming influences included Stewart Copeland of The Police, Roger Taylor from
Queen, and Phil Collins of Genesis.
Hawkins and Grohl met at a show when Hawkins was still with Morrissette. Grohl’s band would have an opening soon after when then-drummer William Goldsmith left. Grohl called Hawkins, who was a huge Foo Fighters fan and immediately accepted.
Hawkins first appeared with the band in the 1997 video for Foo Fighters’ most popular song, “Everlong,” although he had yet to join the group when the song was recorded. He would go on to pound out epic versions of it as the climax of Foo Fighters’ concerts.
In another highlight of the group’s live shows, Grohl would get behind the drums and Hawkins would sing a cover of Queen’s “Somebody to Love.”
“The best part of getting to be the lead singer of the Foo Fighters for just for one song is I really do have the greatest rock ’n’ roll drummer on the planet earth,” Hawkins said before the song in a March 18 concert in Chile. Grohl can be heard telling him to shut up.
Hawkins is survived by his wife, Alison, and their three children.