The drummer Elton John called one of the greatest ever: “I was so shocked”
Any musician could only hope to be blessed with the kind of ears that Elton John had throughout his career.
He may be one of the few artists who could claim to know the ins and outs of music theory when talking about his hits, but even if he didn’t know the first thing about Bach or Beethoven, his work with Bernie Taupin has made for the most legendary melodies that the 1970s ever spat out. But John would be the first person to tell you that a song doesn’t mean anything unless it has the right arrangement around it.
Although Taupin’s lyrics provide a great road map for him, it’s all about what a song can turn into once it enters the studio. Oftentimes, a piano or a solo guitar might be all you need to get a great sound, but it’s not like a song like ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ would have worked as a morose ballad. It was made to be one of the best rock and roll tunes of all time, and even if John sounds like a modern-day Little Richard on the recording, it would have meant nothing if not for Davey Johnston’s guitar kicking everything off.
But when it comes to rock and roll, the guitar isn’t nearly as important as most people think it is. Plenty of artists have been able to make a career out of pumping out the greatest riffs of all time, but if you think about the construction of any rock and roll song, the drums are the real ex-factor behind everything. Chuck Berry and Little Richard would have been nowhere without that driving beat, and that wasn’t lost when John started playing.
Because when you break it down, the piano technically is a percussion instrument. It might be a bit more refined than the average drum, but whenever someone’s trying to get some energy out of their performance, they’re not delicately stroking the keys by any stretch. All good rock and roll is about beating the hell out of the piano, but even if artists like Stevie Wonder doubled as fantastic drummers when they weren’t behind the keyboard, nothing could replace a powerhouse behind the kit.
Everyone from John Bonham to Keith Moon has etched themselves into rock history purely for the momentum they created in their bands. There were certainly technicians who knew how to serve the song like Ringo Starr and even Stewart Copeland of The Police, but when Taylor Hawkins passed away in the 2020s, John was convinced that the world had lost a rhythm giant well before his time.
Hawkins might have had his work cut out for him being in a band with Dave Grohl, but John felt that his touch was on a different level than any other drummer alive, saying, “I was so shocked because he played on my Lockdown Sessions album and he was one of the nicest people you could’ve ever met. And one of the greatest drummers and a true musician who loved all sorts of music and loved life.”
But the only reason why Hawkins was able to push himself that much was because of how Grohl wanted the song to go. The Foo Fighters frontman was practically a 1990s version of John Bonham, but Hawkins was one of the only people that could match him note-for-note, whether it was playing every single fill in ‘Everlong’ or managing to match himself up perfectly when recording the drums and cymbals separately on the song ‘Subterranean’.
Foo Fighters might be more known for their massive radio singles to the average music fan, but if you want to see what Hawkins is truly capable of, listen to the back half of the song ‘But Honestly’. The song is one of the purest shots of adrenaline the Foos ever made, and Hawkins was that magical heartbeat that no one realised was so important until it was gone in an instant.
