Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron tells Rolling Stone that Taylor Hawkins had a 'heart-to-heart' with Dave Grohl about his workload at the time. The band disputes this. But an anonymous friend of Hawkins says the conversation was 'freeing.' MORE:
, the band’s charismatic drummer and singer, known for his athletic performances and surprising vocal agility, was hanging out in the lobby when the sound of a drum set came crashing through the din, playing his parts to “The Pretender” and “Everlong.” The sound piqued his interest, so he ventured out to find the source.
“Honestly, I think he was just so tired,” Hawkins’ longtime friend and former boss, singer Sass Jordan, says. “Tired of the whole game.” When Hawkins learned that the group had added a one-off March date in Australia, the anonymous friend says that Hawkins was so upset he called them to vent about it. He told the friend he was given assurances the band would have a lighter schedule going forward. “And he had every reason to believe that would happen,” they say. “He“He tried to keep up,” Cameron says. “He just did whatever it took to keep up, and in the end he couldn’t keep up.”last June that he was struggling.
A preliminary autopsy yielded only question marks. A urine toxicology report found the presence of marijuana, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and opioids in his system. Forensic doctors reportedly claimed Hawkins’ heart weighed at least 600 grams, about double the normal size, and that it could have collapsed without the aid of the drugs. Results of any official autopsy are not yet public.
And down in Paraguay, Emma Sofía Peralta is crushed that she’ll never see Hawkins live, but their brief encounter has inspired her to focus more on drumming. She’s even received an invitation to jam with one of the most popular groups in the country. “Taylor gave us something to believe in,” she wrote on Instagram.
The Hawkins family relocated to Laguna Beach, California, where Taylor made a friend in Jon Davison, who has since become the lead singer for Yes thanks to Hawkins’ recommendation. “I have this vivid memory of Taylor calling me when we were 10 and expressing with such personality and excitement about discovering the albumby Queen,” Davison says. “From that moment on, he became completely enamored with their drummer, Roger Taylor. Not long after, he convinced his parents to buy him a drum set.
Salas was unsure about taking a chance on a kid who couldn’t yet keep a reliable tempo, but Jordan wanted to give him a shot. “You could just tell he was a star,” she says. “I knew it the second he walked in the room. When somebody exudes that much love and that much light, you’re just drawn to them. I was like, ‘We can work with this guy. He’d be so awesome to have on the road.'”
When it came to rooming with Hawkins, the drummer’s Spicoli tendencies were new to self-professed “clean freak” Tobias, but the two musicians soon learned they had enough in common that Hawkins’ messiness didn’t matter. “I would find dirty socks everywhere and old board shorts on the floor,” he says. “But we were kids, and that tour was very debaucherous. So we saw it all and went through it all. But he was a great roommate, other than throwing shit everywhere all the time.
But playing with the Foos was a chance for Hawkins to become more than a hired gun for a pop star and join a real group. “It seemed like he was made for that band,” Tobias says. “Just from the physicality to loving all different kinds of music and just how he was playing for one of the best drummers in the world. The fact that [Dave] trusted Taylor to run that engine says a lot. And I don’t think any of that was wasted on him.
That doesn’t mean Hawkins didn’t add a unique element to the Foos’ songs separate from what Grohl could have simply added on his own. “Taylor sometimes played parts that were a little looser, maybe wilder,” producer Butch Vig says. “He’d try to sneak fills into songs. Sometimes I would let him go, and Dave would let him go, but other times we’d rein him in. He knew that his drumming had to fit in the context of a Foo Fighters song.
After the overdose, Hawkins worked to correct the course of his life. In 2005, he married Alison and formed the side project the Coattail Riders. He recorded his own music with the group and took it on the road. The Foos had graduated to arenas by this point thanks to hits like “Learn to Fly,” “Best of You,” and “Times Like These,” but the Coattail Riders stuck to tiny under-the-radar club gigs. “We went all over the country in a Winnebago,” Coattail Riders guitarist Gannin Arnold says.
He also had fun meeting his favorite musicians. “He was always Mister Fanboy, but that was part of his shtick,” Stewart Copeland, Hawkins’ idol from the Police,after Hawkins’ death. “‘OK, OK, Taylor, calm down!’ … He was 50 years old going on eight.”
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