Music world mourns Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, dead at 50

Tributes have poured in from across the music world for Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in Columbia on Saturday.

Tributes have poured in from across the music world for Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in Columbia on Saturday.

Investigators said traces of marijuana, opioids, anti-depressants and other drugs had been found in the body of the 50-year-old musician, who was discovered in his Bogota hotel room only hours ­before being due to go onstage with the Grammy Award-winning group.

The mayor’s office said a local emergency line had received a call late on Friday local time about a “patient complaining of chest pains”.

A doctor “performed the ­respective resuscitation manoeuvres, but there was no response and the patient was declared ­deceased,” it said, giving no cause of death.

“The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins,” the band tweeted.

“His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever.”

As part of one of the world’s most influential and critically lauded alternative rock bands, Hawkins was known for his on-stage charisma and classic rock-inspired beats, which he once said were influenced by legends such as Phil Collins and Queen’s Roger Taylor.

He had played with Foo Fighters since 1997, when he was taken on by lead singer and former ­Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, providing percussion on some of the group’s biggest hits, including Learn to Fly and Best of You.

Before joining Foo Fighters, Hawkins drummed for Canadian indie singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette.

His arrival after Foo Fighters’ first two albums coincided with the band moving from the hard rock scene to mainstream stardom.

In an interview last year, Grohl, 53, described his first meeting with Hawkins and how he convinced him to join his band.

“I was like, ‘Wow, you’re ­either my twin or my spirit animal, or my best friend!’ in the first 10 seconds of meeting him,” he said.

Tributes have poured in from across the music world for Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died in Columbia on Saturday.

“In utter disbelief at the news of Taylor Hawkins,” rockers Nickelback said.

At a gig in Mexico on Friday night, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin dedicated the song Everglow to the “beautiful man”.

Former Oasis star Liam Gallagher said he was “absolutely devastated to hear the news”.

It is not the first time that Grohl has experienced the sudden death of a bandmate: he was the drummer in Nirvana when frontman Kurt Cobain killed himself in April 1994.

AFP