What made Taylor Hawkins such a uniquely great drummer?
This may be one of the least rock ‘n’ roll descriptions ever bequeathed to someone who could genuinely sum up all the best parts of being a career rock ‘n’ roller, but for lack of a better way of putting it, Taylor Hawkins was a unicorn.
Now, put any My Little Pony associations you may have with that word out of mind. Although he did seem to be living proof that friendship really is magic while he was with us, what I really mean is that Taylor Hawkins was, above all, a rare and wonderful beast.
This was a guy whose smouldering good looks and rasping voice could have seen him front any number of also-ran hard rock acts in the alternative rock scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He didn’t though and instead focused on what he was good at. What he was good at was drumming, and there was basically no one else on the rock scene of that era that could hold a candle to him on that front.
It’s the kind of phenomenal talent that most would demand a whole rock band built around, and for good reason, they’d deserve it. Yet Hawkins was a career sideman. Getting his start playing arenas with Alanis Morissette before joining Dave Grohl’s nascent Foo Fighters when original drummer William Goldsmith couldn’t cut it in Grohl’s eyes. He was pleased as punch to be a trusted lieutenant, and I’m sure Grohl couldn’t believe his luck when he found a drummer of Hawkins’ skill who didn’t have the ego to match.
Because that’s what really made Taylor Hawkins such a unicorn. That despite having all the credentials for being an insufferable egomaniac whose skill was utterly undeniable (with nobody knowing that more intimately than him), he was the furthest possible candidate from that. That’s why there was such an outpouring of pure grief when he tragically passed in 2022, for above all else, even his prodigious drumming ability, he was ferociously a good man and a good friend.
Who inspired Taylor Hawkins to be this way?
Perhaps a large part of why Hawkins’ ego never clouded his rise and life as much as other rock legends of his generation was because he was simply a fan of great music. He was continuously inspired by others, always rhapsodising about his influences in interviews and collaborating with his heroes, to the point of naming his solo project The Coattail Riders, which makes sense, seeing how effusive and genuine he was about paying his respects.
The best example of this came from a 2007 interview Hawkins gave to Drum! magazine, where he talked about what makes a great rock drummer in his typically humble fashion. He discussed how important it was for a drummer to also be a showman, as dynamic and exciting a presence onstage as anyone else. Considering he was the Foo Fighter who looked the most like a real-life rock star, this was something he walked the walk about, rather than just talking the talk.
That wasn’t all he had to say, noting self-reflectively, “I don’t really consider myself a showman though, I really don’t. A lot of the drummers I like were always intense drummers. Stewart Copeland is so intense live. He looks like he might kill you. And Steve Perkins, especially when Jane’s Addiction was at their height, he was so on fire. And he was my favourite drummer for years, the last drummer I consciously emulated.”
That checks out, for as fun as Taylor Hawkins was behind the kit, he was never chaotic. His style combined the ferocity of Keith Moon with a metronome’s timekeeping precision, and it will be a good long while before we see his like again.
