The 1980s band that made Taylor Hawkins hate modern rock: “Drab”
Taylor Hawkins was always the consummate rock and roll fan from the moment he started playing drums.
He wasn’t exactly supposed to be the biggest star in the world in the same band that had Dave Grohl in it, but when looking at his track record, some of the biggest pieces of Foo Fighters songs wouldn’t have existed if Hawkins wasn’t laying down the rhythm in the back. He was focused on the backbeat before anything else, but he did have a certain idea of how rock and roll musicians should be presenting themselves.
Granted, what defined rock and roll when Foo Fighters were becoming the biggest band in the world isn’t al that cut and dry. Everyone was still in the post-Nirvana depression when Grohl made that first record by himself, and by the time that Hawkins joined the group, there was no way that they were going to hop on the same bandwagon that gave the world Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, either.
They had something a lot more true-to-form in terms of classic rock, and a lot of their best work came from them going back to those old tropes again and again. That made them prime fodder for becoming a dad rock band, but Hawkins was never ashamed of wearing his favourite musicians on his sleeve. He loved The Who just as much as he loved Jane’s Addiction because the main factor was people who actually cared about their songs.
Every album that they ever released was supposed to have the best hooks that they could find, but that’s not what rock and roll was all about. Even in the 1950s, there were people like Frankie Avalon making a mockery of what the genre was supposed to be, and when Hawkins was falling in love with Nirvana back in the day, he was just relieved that he didn’t have to worry about a billion different bands sounding like Bon Jovi all of a sudden.
Jon Bon Jovi may have been one of the better bands from the hair metal era, but when looking at their track record, Hawkins didn’t want to live in a world where every single musician was trying to make their own knockoff version of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, saying, “In the early 1980s, I was listening to The Police and Van Halen not much else was happening, soon after that you would get all these Bon Jovi sounding bands, I don’t want to say anything bad about Bon Jovi but there were too many of these kinda drab bands about. I like intelligent real music.”
That wouldn’t have been that much of a problem, but if you look at the biggest names in rock in the 2000s, a lot of them were doing the same thing with nu-metal. Korn and Deftones may have had a different approach to their music, but as soon as bands tried to get their foot in the door with half a hook and a bunch of spiky hairdos, it was clear to Hawkins that he was seeing the same kind of trend happening all over again.
And that’s before even getting into the revivalist era of hair metal. It’s not like everyone was dressing up in spandex like they did back in the day, but since a band like Buckcherry was still finding a way to get their foot in the door by making their own brand of glamorous rock and roll, there was probably still a large number of people that would be listening to Steel Panther later on a not realise that the band was a joke.
That’s not what Hawkins was interested in, and even though he liked all brands of rock and roll whenever he played in his cover band Chevy Metal, he knew that having bands like Bon Jovi around was an extremely mixed blessing. Their songs were great, but sometimes when you do your job a little too well, it’s only a matter of time before the musical leeches start piling in around you.
