The moment Taylor Hawkins met David Bowie
Despite carving out an impressive string of albums with the Foo Fighters, Taylor Hawkins has plenty of material to his own name. The iconic drummer found time to kickstart his own solo projects, including releasing an EP of original material under his own name, Kota, in 2016. He had his own band, Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, along with his old-school rock cover band Chevy Metal.
When he was away from the Foos, Hawkins let his love of 1970s and 1980s rock music flower. On the final LP from the Coattail Riders, 2019’s Get the Money, Hawkins invited a host of famous friends in to help out. Everyone from Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan to country singer LeAnn Rimes to bandmates Dave Grohl and Pat Smear made appearances on the record.
“I’m really proud of it,” Hawkins told The AfterShow in 2019. “Foo Fighters is my day job – my Dave job! – and I’d be gutted without it, but this is a whole other side of me. I’m not precious, I see my own music almost like clip art – I’ll just lift things!”
“In the first song, ‘Crossed The Line’, I sing ‘the best of you’ as a wink to the boys, and then, ‘Sometimes you’ve got to play the game’ which is a Queen lift, and then, ‘It’s been a long time since we rock’n’rolled’ – obviously, that’s Zeppelin,” Hawkins added. “When I get a moment outside of the Foo Fighters, I have to get these songs out.”
One of Hawkins’ most important influences was David Bowie, the legendary shape-shifting singer whose eclectic range was a major inspiration for Hawkins’ own musical style. The Foo Fighters played at Bowie’s 50th birthday party in 1997, but Hawkins was still a few months away from joining the band at that point. Luckily for Hawkins, he had already met Bowie courtesy of his first employer, Alanis Morissette.
“Alanis did a show with him. I was warming up for it when I saw this figure in the corner smoking a cigarette,” Hawkins remembered. “I look over and Bowie’s watching me play… I was like, ‘Holy shit! Hey!’ He said, ‘Come on, man, keep playing.’ When I put my sticks down I did the typical, ‘It’s an honour’ thing and he was lovely – he said, ‘You’re really good, you should probably have a good career’ and walked away. I was like, `Fucking A!’”
“Two weeks later we did the Brits and I bumped into fucking Bowie again,” he added. “He said, ‘We keep running into each other, don’t we?’ Years on from that, he was playing at the Wiltem in LA. Me and my wife were late and walking down the aisle and, as he was singing, he pointed to me as if he was looking at his watch to say, ‘You’re late’. That was the last time I ever saw David Bowie. Whether he just thought I was a late fan or knew it was me, I’ll never know. I always liked to think he knew it was me…”
