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 fifty.
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 were scheduled to perform at Bogota’s festival on Friday. Hawkins’ final concert was Sunday at another festival in San Isidro, Argentina.
“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. “Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family.”
A police vehicle, an ambulance, and supporters were assembled outside the Bogota Hotel where Hawkins had been believed to be staying.
“It was a band I grew up with. This leaves me empty,” Juan Sebastian Anchique, 23, told The Associated Press as he mourned Hawkins outside the hotel.
Colombian police did not provide details but confirmed that the victim had died. A tweet from the U.S. Embassy Bogota conveyed its condolences.
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 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.”
“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.”
It’s the second time Grohl has experienced the death of a close bandmate. Grohl was Nirvana’s drummer in the 1994 death of Kurt Cobain.
Hawkins received many tributes via social media on Friday night.
“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.”
“What an incredible talent, who didn’t also need to be so kind and generous and cool but was all those things too anyway,” tweeted Finneas, Billie Eilish’s brother, co-writer and producer. “The world was so lucky to have his gifts for the time that it did.”
Hawkins, who was born Oliver Taylor Hawkins, in Fort Worth Texas, in 1972, was brought up in Laguna Beach. After playing in Sylvia, an obscure band from Southern California, Hawkins was hired as a drummer by Sass Jordan.
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.”
When he spent two years in the mid-1990s drumming for Morrissette, he was inspired primarily by the playing of Jane’s Addiction’s Stephen Perkins.
“My drums were set up like him, the whole thing,” Hawkins told the AP. “I was still sort of a copycat at that point. You have to take some time and work hard at developing your style. I didn’t sound exactly like him, I sound like me, but he was a big, huge influence.”
Grohl was with Hawkins at the time, but they met backstage. Grohl’s band would have an opening soon after when then-drummer William Goldsmith left. Grohl called Hawkins to accept his offer, as he was a big Foo Fighters supporter.
“I am not afraid to say that our chance meeting was a kind of love at first sight, igniting a musical ‘twin flame’ that still burns to this day,” Grohl wrote in his book. “Together, we have become an unstoppable duo, onstage and off, in pursuit of any and all adventure we can find.”
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, however, go on to pound out epic versions of it hundreds of times 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 grab the mic to 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 is heard telling Grohl not to talk.
Hawkins also co-starred in Foo Fighters’ recently released horror-comedy film, “Studio 666,” in which a demonic force in a house where the band is staying seizes Grohl and makes him murderous. Hawkins is killed along with the rest of the band members one at a time. This idea was born out of the band’s 10th studio album, recorded at their Los Angeles home.
He sang and drummed for Taylor Hawkins’ side project and Coattail Riders. They released an album, “Get the Money,” in 2006.
Hawkins was survived by Alison Hawkins and their three kids.
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Manuel Rueda (Associated Press Writer) contributed this report to Bogota in Colombia.
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Follow Andrew Dalton (AP Entertainment Writer) on Twitter https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
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