Watching Taylor Hawkins play the drums made you want to play the drums. It’s that simple.
The sight of his arms and hair flailing as he blazed a frantic trail from his concert toms to his floor toms — reaching sky high every so often to hit that crash cymbal to his left (a rotator cuff injury waiting to happen, trust me on this) — made you want to find the nearest set of drums and attempt the halting rhythms of “All My Life,” or the syncopated, “Ticket to Ride”-on-’roids pattern to “Learn to Fly” for yourself. If a drum kit wasn’t available a steering wheel would do.
That’s how infectious the energy and joy coming off the drum riser was when Hawkins was onstage with the Foo Fighters. You could feel Hawkins’ mile-wide smile resonating in his radical fills and stadium-shaking grooves. The alchemy of those chops, a precision that never flagged over the course of the Foos’ marathon shows, and his ‘I-wouldn’t-wanna-be-anywhere-else-on-the-planet-right-now-except behind these-drums’ vibe inspired countless others to pick up sticks and drive their parents, significant others, and neighbors crazy. In the same way that watching drummers like Roger Taylor from Queen, Rush’s Neil Peart, Stewart Copeland of the Police, Phil Collins, and Alex Van Halen lit the fuse in Hawkins as a kid.
Hawkins didn’t inspire me to start drumming. My fuse was lit around the same time as his, and in similar fashion as I learned during two conversations we had — one for a now-defunct men’s magazine you’ve never heard of back in 2006, another for Modern Drummer in 2020. Having been born a month apart, we both spent our pre-teen years sitting through the same Rod Stewart and REO Speedwagon videos during MTV’s nascent days in hopes of seeing one of the early performance videos from the Police, Van Halen, Genesis, and Rush. The sight of those aforementioned drumming deities manning fortresses of octobans and concert toms and rototoms and splash cymbals and China cymbals and gongs, looking like they were working 10 times harder but having 10 times more fun than their bandmates (just like Hawkins always looked with the Foos) made drumming seem like it was the key to everything. Off we went, no turning back.
I drew great inspiration from Hawkins because of what he represented. More than any other drummer to come along in the last 25 years, Hawkins was a direct link to what I consider the sweetest spot on the rock drumming timeline. In both sound and spirit, he was a torch bearer for that early 70s to early 80s period when drummers like Peart, Copeland, Collins, AVH, and Bill Buford (It should be noted that Hawkins was a massive prog rock fan, and had a huge affinity for Buford’s work with both Yes and King Crimson) picked up what the OG’s (Ringo, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Mitch Mitchell, John Bonham, Ginger Baker) put down and took it further out. They made it artier, jazzier, faster, weirder, harder. Hawkins channeled that rhythmic energy, through his own child-of-MTV filter. At first glance, his playing on “The Pretender” or “Rope” might seem to have little in common with “YYZ” or “Roundabout.” Scratch the surface and you’ll find the DNA of the latter songs coursing throughout the former.
I loved that Hawkins proudly flew the flag for an era when drummers were Drummers. Not faceless, stoic timekeepers, tethered to hard drives and click tracks onstage, supplemented by samples and loops, hermetically sealed behind plexiglass. Not social-first shredders, flashing every sick lick in their arsenal on Instagram Live, illuminated by a ring light and the hope that you’ll click on that LINK IN BIO. He flew the flag for Drummers. The actual living, breathing, speeding-up, slowing-down, counting-the-song-in, counting-the-song-out, taking-a-few-liberties-during-the-outro, only-one-allowed-to-wear-shorts (debatable) heartbeat of a band. Hawkins wasn’t doing it by himself hoping to attract followers. He was doing it where it counted: with other musicians, onstage and in the studio. His major concern live was breaking a snare head mid-song, not the Ableton rig crashing.
What was especially endearing to me about Hawkins was that based on our couple of conversations (about 60 minutes total) he struck me as absolutely, 1000%, the drum geek I figured he was. The dude with the image of a young Alex Van Halen or a handwritten CB 700 logo on his front kick drum head. The guy with oversized roto toms off to his right, exactly like Roger Taylor. Please enjoy this excerpt from our October 2020 conversation, which was for a special MD issue celebrating Alex Van Halen (who, incidentally, lived just up the road from Hawkins):
Every once in a while I just sit down on the drums with an old album and play along to it. That’s how I learned to play drums. I thought recently, ‘I’m Gonna Play Women and Children First,’ because I know all the songs, basically. But I got to “Loss of Control” and I was like, ‘I don’t even know how the fuck he’s doing this.’ It’s so crazy, it’s so fast. And it’s moving, and pushing, and getting faster and faster near the end where they’re just doing crazy shit and turning beats upside down and I was just like ‘Holy fuck, this might be the most radical drum part ever.’ I mean, Alex has so many classic, amazing drum tracks. But that one’s outta control. “Loss of Control,” it’s aptly titled. I mean that in an awesome way. The drums, the vibe, it’s like those moments on Police records when Stewart Copeland is going so fucking crazy you just go ‘Holy fuck.’ Like “Demolition Man” or that last song on the second album (starts making noises like a rapid-fire sequence of snare rolls) “No Time This Time.” It gets so unbridled. It’s got that Tony Williams thing where the feel is there, 100 percent, but they let go of time to create a complete, utterly out of control experience. Like you’re driving a Porsche with no brakes. Man, Alex could go way out there into turn-the-beat-upside-down fusion land, then do speed metal, punk, whatever you want to call it. I also love “Sinner’s Swing” a lot. That’s such a sick-ass groove… I mean, I don’t ever need to hear “Jump” again, but it blew my mind when I was a kid. And even in that they turn the beat around, in the middle. They’re just orchestrating. I think Eddie and Alex would just do that shit on a whim. Like the intro to “Panama.” All the tom hits are on the upbeat against the riff that Eddie’s doing. I’ve asked Alex about “Panama,” I said ‘You guys don’t even start it that way live.’ He said, ‘No, we just did it once in the studio. We didn’t even know what the fuck we were doing.’”
His enthusiasm going down the Alex Van Halen rabbit hole (with a quick detour into the Stewart Copeland rabbit hole) that afternoon was palpable and genuine. He spoke for drum geeks everywhere. Just like he played for drum geeks, and created future drum greeks. And of course I went and listened to VH’s Women and Children First and the Police’s Reggatta de Blanc the second our call ended. The dude could inspire.