Taylor Hawkins, drummer and key member of the Foo Fighters, died yesterday, March 25, 2022. He was 50.
According to a Rolling Stone news report, Hawkins and the rest of the Foo Fighters were currently on tour in Colombia in South America when Hawkins passed away.
The official cause of death is currently unavailable, but news reports from Colombia mentioned that he was found dead in his hotel room.
Fans of the drummer, a long-time member of the Foo Fighters, were shocked when the band announced Hawkins’ passing on their official social media platform.
“The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins. His musical gift and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever. Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.”
Hawkins joined the Foo Fighters in 1997 when he replaced original drummer William Goldsmith. Hawkins’ musicality has since been an indelible part of the Foo Fighter sound, not only because of his skill, but of his connection to singer-songwriter-guitarist Dave Grohl, who was originally a drummer for his previous band Nirvana.
Hawkins has been with the Foo Fighters at the band’s most difficult times. At one point the group only had three members—Grohl, Hawkins, and bassist Nate Mendel. But as a trio, the band still managed to forge on as a band and still managed to make music.
Hawkins first appearance on a Foo Fighters record is on the 1999 album "Nothing Left To Lose."
He had a heroin overdose in 2001 that left him comatose for two weeks. But he survived the ordeal and came back a better musician and with the Foo Fighters, rose to heights of creativity and success they have never experienced before.
Among those successes were multi-platinum albums, their historic two sold-out nights in England’s Wembley Stadium back in 2008, several successful musical documentary films and their induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just last year (2021) wherein they were inducted by Sir Paul McCartney himself.
With successful album releases as recent as 2021’s “Medicine At Midnight” and even a spoof horror movie wherein they starred as themselves, the Foo Fighters are as significant as ever.
Before he joined the Foo Fighters, Hawkins was the drummer for Alanis Morrissette during the latter’s breakout success with “Jagged Little Pill.”
He occasionally took to the mic as a frontman on Foo Fighter shows, exchanging places with Grohl, who would in turn sit on his drum set.
The singer-drummer-songwriter recently released an album under his other music project Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders.
Hawkins was born February 17, 1972. He is survived by his wife and three children.