(Credits: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Sat 9 August 2025 3:00, UK
Despite being possibly the only drummer in the world who could make Dave Grohl surrender his kit, safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t do a better job, there was actually something refreshingly un-rock ‘n’ roll about Taylor Hawkins.
I speak, of course, about all the negative attributes one associates with rock stars. As far as we know, Hawkins was a man who, despite immersing himself in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, never let it change him.
As we could all see by the sheer outpouring of grief on his passing, everyone loved Taylor. However, this wasn’t a different kind of love that we saw, say, when Ozzy Osbourne passed away. Unlike when so many of our rock heroes pass on, there wasn’t a hint of a “complicated past” or “troublesome behaviour” that we had to reckon with. The people didn’t mourn a “rock hero”; they mourned a genuine, lovable guy.
The kind of guy that no one had a bad word to say about. Who was always charming, friendly and had time for anyone, whoever they were. All signs that the kind of rock star lifestyle that Hawkins enjoyed (and enjoy he did) never went to his head, again, as far as we know. Perhaps the reason for this was that, despite enjoying a career in music rivalled by few, Hawkins never stopped being, at his core, a rock ‘n’ roll fan first and foremost.
The man spent his time off the road with the Foo Fighters fronting a cover band called Chevy Metal that played up and down the rock clubs of the Sunset Strip. They played on records by everyone from Slash and Brian May to Kerry Ellis and Nancy Wilson. His sheer drive to play with as many of his heroes and peers led him to name his own solo band, Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Riders. Yet, above all else, there was one band that Hawkins was a bigger fan of than just about anyone else.
What was Taylor Hawkins’ favourite band?
The band was the platonic ideal of glamorous rock stars, the kind of band that makes young, impressionable fans believe that their rock idols are space aliens, or higher beings sent down to planet Earth to make their lives brighter, more exciting than they ever could be among mere Earthlings. Whose sleazy, erotic image is the exact opposite of anything to do with the Foo Fighters’ image of a group of down-to-earth guys who are just happy to be there. That band is Jane’s Addiction.
Hawkins had his life utterly changed by Perry Farrell’s group of psychedelic, funk-rock maniacs. He claimed as much in an interview with Rhythm in 2003, where he said that, as far “as I’m concerned, Jane’s Addiction saved rock ‘n’ roll”.
This conversation was prompted by the fact that at the time, Foo Fighters were headlining that year’s Big Day Out festival alongside Jane’s Addiction, and Hawkins was spending his time doing as he did, and getting to know his heroes.
Just like basically everyone who met Hawkins, they each became trusted friends of his. In fact, according to Jane’s Addiction’s guitar and bass tech, he was a key part of convincing guitarist Dave Navarro to rejoin the band for their ill-fated 2024 tour. Navarro himself was a close friend of Hawkins, and just before the band came to their most recent and public acrimonious end as a direct result of that 2024 tour, the drummer had actually started a side project with Navarro and Jane’s’ former bassist Chris Chaney called NHC.
It’s very telling that a force of sheer positivity like Taylor Hawkins could get a band like Jane’s Addiction, who had the kind of stability that made the Gallagher brothers look like the Partridge Family, to see eye-to-eye, even briefly. We’d all love to have that kind of effect on our heroes, and if we can get there by being kind and friendly, the way Hawkins did, then we can at least begin trying.
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