The moment Taylor Hawkins knew that he would become a drummer: “I just fell in love with it”
Musical origin stories can be some of the most interesting parts of a rock star’s personal history. Whether it’s Tom Petty watching The Beatles play The Ed Sullivan Show or Jack White getting passed down a drum kit from one of his nine siblings, every famous musician has a different way of getting into music. There does seem to be one common thread: a heightened sense of being an outsider.
Former Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins was no different. As a transplant to Laguna Beach, California, Hawkins was struggling to find his area of expertise as a young child. Other kids were good at sports or had strong academic futures, but Hawkins didn’t fit into any of those cliques. Instead, it took a neighbour with a drum kit for Hawkins to find his destiny.
“I had a neighbour… who had a rickety rackety drum set and a couple of beat up acoustic guitars,” Hawkins told BBC Radio 6 Music’s Steve Lamacq during his drumming masterclass back in 2019. “I just wasn’t really good at anything when I was ten. I wasn’t particularly good in school. I wasn’t good at sport, as you would say. I was OK in baseball but I hadn’t found something yet.”
“I remember I was ten years old, it was the summer of 1982. He was a couple of years older than me, but he had this drum set. I was trying to learn how to play guitar, and it seemed too much like work, like homework,” Hawkins continued. “He said, ‘Just sit on the drums. Try it. I want to show you a beat.'” After Hawkins picked up on the simple beat, it was all suddenly clear.
“He just said, ‘You’re a drummer.’ You can tell really quick if someone’s a drummer. I took to it immediately,” Hawkins said. “So that day there was like a lightning bolt shot into me and I’m like, ‘I’m a drummer, that’s what I’m going to do.’ That sort of became my armour and I just fell in love with it.” Around the same time, Hawkins found the perfect compliment to his newfound love in the form of a friend’s abandoned record collection.
“There was this record with this monster holding these guys in his hand, this cartoon monster,” Hawkins explained. “And it was Queen, News of the World. I just fell in love with that record.” Roger Taylor quickly became Hawkins’ drumming hero, soon to be complemented by the likes of Stewart Copeland from The Police and Neil Peart of Rush.
Check out Hawkins discussing his entry into the drums down below.
