The Taylor Hawkins I knew, who wanted his fans to always have a good time

The Foo Fighters’ drummer Taylor Hawkins I knew was a passionate man of rock’n’roll, a music fanboy and he was also so much more, writes Kathy McCabe.

With his blonde locks flying in a dozen directions at once, his face contorted into a grimace or stretched into a megawatt grin as he pounded skins and cymbals, his limbs exerting athletic precision and power, Taylor Hawkins was the quintessential drummer.

But the engine room of the Foo Fighters since 1997, and captain of his own ship with myriad side projects and guests spots with mates and rock stars, was so much more.

A passionate man of rock’n’roll, a music fanboy whose worship of Queen, Bowie and AC/DC was legendary, Hawkins loved to entertain.

He caught the music bug early when he was 10 and his mother Elizabeth took him to see Queen, with Hawkins making the prescient declaration “I’ll play that stadium one day.”

When we caught up ahead of the release of Medicine At Midnight, the Foo Fighters’ 10th studio album in November 2020, Hawkins captured the essence of the band and why they continued to thrill millions of fans around the world at sold-out stadiums.

US musician Taylor Hawkins arrives for Billboard's 2019 Woman of the Year at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Picture: AFP

“We’re a band of entertainers, we’re not there to show you our new art project when you come to our concert, or try to challenge you. We’re there to make sure you get hammered and maybe laid, to laugh your arse off and have a good time.”

While other bands of their stature find it almost impossible to bridge the inevitable physical distance success imposes between band and fan, the Foos always maintained that down-to-earth level of contact which has earned them the double-edged sobriquet of being “the nice guys of rock”.

There would be hundreds of thousands of fans and admirers looking at their photo with Hawkins now and reminiscing about the day they crossed paths with him at their hotel or a bar or Bondi Beach or the Gold Coast hinterland on bikes or someone else’s gig.

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl (right) and drummer Taylor Hawkins and some mates ride around the Gold Coast in 2015. Picture: Tim Marsden

“Every time you come outside the bus and there’s a bunch of people saying, ‘Come here, sign an autograph’, at some point I will go and talk to those people,” he said when he and Dave Grohl came to Sydney to 2005 to announce their In Your Honour tour.

“I have no f … ing desire to be a movie star like all these guys in America now. I’m a rock musician.”

It wasn’t always easy for him being the drummer in one of the world’s biggest bands fronted by one of the most revered drummers of the modern era.

There were regular but momentary creative tensions between what his best mate and creative controller Grohl wanted as they launched into the writing and recording of a new Foo Fighters record, and Hawkins’ old school, rock’n’roll mindset.

When we spoke ahead of the release of Medicine At Midnight, he admitted to some trepidation when Grohl flagged they would be using drum loops on the lead single Shame Shame “because I’m the drummer”. But he parked his ego and went along for the ride.

Taylor Hawkins, Dave Grohl and Nate Mendel of Foo Fighters performs onstage at the after-party for the Los Angeles premiere of "Studio 666" at the Fonda Theatre on February 16, 2022 in Hollywood, California. Picture: Getty

“It’s not like we made a full-on techno record and I still think Shame sounds like a rock song as much as Another One Bites the Dust does, it just has elements we’ve never used before,” Hawkins told me.

“We had a playback for some of the record company down at a studio and my wife came down and listened to all of it because I hadn’t really played her anything yet and she said ‘Dude, it’s a really fun record. Get over yourself.’

“Who am I to be a purist? I threw the ego out the window.”

His legion of Australian fans have experienced so many great Hawkins performances over the past 25 years, not only in the stadiums he loved to command from behind his kit, but its small clubs, either when they were starting out or with side projects like his awesome covers band Chevy Metal.

He and Grohl announced a secret show at the tiny Oxford Art Factory when they were in Sydney in 2017 for a promo visit. The pair could never just come here and not play. They charged $20 a ticket with about 400 lucky fans witnessing exuberant if often loose versions of My Sharona and Turning Japanese alongside The Rolling Stones’ Miss You and AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock.

Taylor Hawkins was one of rock’s greatest drummers and irreplaceable entertainers. But his everyman bonhomie, his infectious joy and genuine warmth makes his loss all the more heartbreaking. Vale Taylor.