Foo Fighters Drummer Taylor Hawkins Dead at 50

Taylor Hawkins, the jovial, ferocious drummer for Foo Fighters for additional than two many years, died Friday at the age of 50. The band announced the musician’s dying in a assertion but did not expose a result in.

“The Foo Fighters relatives is devastated by the tragic and premature reduction of our beloved Taylor Hawkins,” the team wrote. “His musical spirit and infectious laughter will are living on with all of us for good.” Foo Fighters are at this time on tour in South The usa and ended up scheduled to perform at Festival Estéreo Picnic in Bogotá, Colombia, at the time of Hawkins’ death, a rep for the band instructed Rolling Stone.

Bogota municipal authorities issued a statement Friday night confirming that the city’s crisis solutions received a get in touch with about a individual complaining of “chest pain,” the Connected Push studies. Ambulances were sent to the Four Seasons Casa Medina hotel, exactly where the band was keeping. Health and fitness staff “carried out resuscitation maneuvers” on Hawkins but “the affected individual was declared dead,” Bogotá’s Secretary of Health and fitness tweeted Saturday morning.

In accordance to the Attorney Common of Colombia, 10 substances were observed in Hawkins, which include antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and opioids. “The Countrywide Institute for Legal Medicine proceeds to conduct the essential professional medical experiments to confirm the bring about of dying,” the office wrote in a tweet on Saturday. “The Attorney General’s office will keep on to look into and will duly advise the findings of forensic examinations in owing time.”

As information of Hawkins’ dying distribute, several musicians and superstars took to social media to honor the late drummer. “God bless you Taylor Hawkins. I loved your spirit and your unstoppable rock electrical power,” wrote Rage Towards the Machine’s Tom Morello, sharing a picture of himself and Hawkins alongside Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell. Miley Cyrus, a mentioned Foo Fighters supporter, shared a photograph of herself and Hawkins to her Instagram tales, crafting, “This is how I’ll generally recall you,” and additional that her impending live performance would be dedicated to him. Slash wrote that Hawkins’ dying still left him “devastated,” saying, “I’ve no text to categorical all the emotions I have about his passing.” Former Desire Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, Ozzy Osbourne and producer Steve Albini were being amid other folks who also shared tributes.

Born in Fort Value, Texas, Hawkins relocated to Laguna Seaside, California with his family members in his early childhood. Subsequent a stint with Canadian singer Sass Jordan in the early Nineties, Hawkins rose to prominence as the touring drummer for Alanis Morissette through the Jagged Minor Pill era. “The second I read ‘You Oughta Know,’ I was like, ‘I’m in that band!’” Hawkins instructed Rolling Stone past November. “I just knew.” Hawkins also appeared in the tunes videos for the singer’s strike singles “You Oughta Know” and “You Master.”

After inter-studio conflict led to the departure of initial Foo Fighters drummer William Goldsmith during recording periods for the group’s breakthrough 2nd album, The Colour and the Condition — forcing frontman Dave Grohl to manage drumming obligations on the record — Hawkins formally joined the band at Grohl’s request in the spring of 1997.

Grohl would later refer to the drummer as his “best good friend and partner in crime” in his 2021 autobiography, The Storyteller: Tales of Lifetime and Music. “During his stint as Alanis Morissette’s drummer, extended ahead of he turned a Foo Fighter, we would bump into each individual other backstage at festivals all about the globe, and our chemistry was so evident that even Alanis herself after questioned him, ‘What are you heading to do when Dave asks you to be his drummer?’” Grohl wrote. “Part Beavis and Butthead, part Dumb and Dumber, we were a hyperactive blur of Parliament Lights and air drumming wherever we went.”

https://www.youtube.com/enjoy?v=v8yMt0BMa9o

In the course of his occupation with Foo Fighters, Hawkins sometimes handled vocal responsibilities, singing lead on the group’s 2005 solitary “Chilly Working day in the Sun” and “Sunday Rain” from 2017’s Concrete and Gold. Hawkins also commonly sang go over tunes with the team, both of those for Foo Fighters B-sides and during are living performances — such as a highly effective rendition of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” all through a January 2021 show for thoroughly-vaccinated enthusiasts in Los Angeles.

“He arrived into a band that was pretty scrappy, in basic, and type of acclimated to that for a next, and then was like, ‘Hang on a next, what if we turn out to be good?’” Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel reported of Hawkins in the band’s latest Rolling Stone include tale. “That was Taylor’s issue, like, ‘Why really do not we find out how to be superior as a band and pay out more awareness to what we’re accomplishing reside?’” Hawkins also co-starred with his bandmates in the Foo Fighters’ horror-comedy movie, Studio 666, introduced past thirty day period.

Exterior of his perform with Foo Fighters, Hawkins often collaborated with other musicians and groups, launching quite a few aspect jobs of his very own. In 2006, he embarked on a solo career with Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, reuniting with his previous Morissette touring bandmate and Jane’s Addiction bassist Chris Chaney. Hawkins would go on to release three albums less than the Coattail Riders banner, tapping artists together with Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor, Elliot Easton of the Cars, Perry Farrell, as properly as Grohl for collaborations. Hawkins also fronted go over band Chevy Steel with good friends Wiley Hodgden and Mick Murphy, with the trio ultimately releasing an album less than the moniker Birds of Satan in 2014.

Most lately, Hawkins joined forces with Chaney and Dave Navarro for NHC — a supergroup fashioned throughout pandemic jam classes at Hawkins’ home studio in Los Angeles. “NHC was the very first time any of us have been in a condition crafting-smart where by we just throw the ball,” Hawkins told Rolling Stone last year. “It’s like taking part in catch, pretty much. A producing session or recording session for us is all 3 of us taking part in playing baseball in a backyard.” The band’s debut album is slated for launch this calendar year.

“The drummer’s seat is the very hot seat,” Hawkins told Rolling Stone in 2020. “It’s the initially man to get fired. It’s the initially [guy] when all people goes, ‘We sucked tonight mainly because he sucked.’ The drummer is seriously the bathroom of the band, but also the most important aspect on a particular level. Your position is to be the pulse of the band.”