HISTORY
Taylor was born on February 17th 1972 in Fort Worth, Texas before he and his family moved to Laguna Beach, California in 1976. He first started drumming around the age of 10, with him seeing Queen play at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in California being the catalyst. From then on Taylor was obsessed, with both Queen and the drums, and from that day he knew he wanted to be in a rock band.
As he got older Taylor briefly played with the band Sylvia before becoming the drummer for Sass Jordan on a European tour supporting Aerosmith. That was when he got his big break.
In 1995, off the back of her hit album ‘Jagged Little Pill’, Canadian American superstar Alanis Morissette recruited him to be her touring drummer for her 18 month album tour, along with him featuring in the music videos for “You Oughta Know”, “All I Really Want” and “You Learn”. It was during this tour that he met his musical soul mate, Dave Grohl. The tour with Alanis ended and he’d heard that Dave and Foo Fighters were looking for a new drummer, so Taylor enquired.
Dave initially thought that Taylor wouldn’t be interested in joining as Alanis Morissette was much bigger than the Foo Fighters at that time, but Taylor jumped at the chance due to his overwhelming desire to be in a rock band. It was from that point that the bromance between them began and on March 18th 1997 Taylor was announced as their new drummer.
Taylor and Foo Fighters worked together on 8 Studio albums, 5 of which went to Number 1 in the UK, along with numerous worldwide tours and festival headlines, such as the iconic Glastonbury Festival back in 2017.
But Taylor wasn’t always sworn to the Foo Fighters, he also enjoyed his side projects. He started his first side project, Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders back in 2004 and released three studio albums with them between 2006 and 2019. He also formed a supergroup with Dave Navarro and Chris Chaney of Jane’s Addiction in 2020 and took on the roles of lead vocals and drums in both bands.
Hawkins was voted “Best Rock Drummer” back in 2005 by Rhythm Magazine and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Foo Fighters in 2021 before he tragically died on March 25th 2022 at the age of 50, whilst on tour with the band in Bogota, Columbia.