| [People] think that we fly around everywhere, which we do, in really nice hotels, which we do, in big backstage areas with tons of food and people asking what we want, if you want to sandwich every five minutes, which we do. We have all that, but it still doesn't change the fact that you have to get up there and kick a** for two and a half hours. And we don't know how to phone it in. Unfortunately, we've never learned that ability. I don't know how someone really could. I really don't know. | |  |  | | Taylor Hawkins at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York with the Sound City Players, Feb. 13, 2013. | | (Mike Lawrie/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | "[People] think that we fly around everywhere, which we do, in really nice hotels, which we do, in big backstage areas with tons of food and people asking what we want, if you want to sandwich every five minutes, which we do. We have all that, but it still doesn't change the fact that you have to get up there and kick a** for two and a half hours. And we don't know how to phone it in. Unfortunately, we've never learned that ability. I don't know how someone really could. I really don't know." | | - Taylor Hawkins, 1972 – 2022 | |
| | rantnrave:// | Ids Like These
In 2008, TAYLOR HAWKINS was called upon to complete an unfinished song by the BEACH BOYS' DENNIS WILSON for a 30th anniversary edition of Wilson's cult classic solo album, PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE. Dennis Wilson, as any Beach Boys fan knows, was the only Beach Boy who actually surfed. He was the drummer, the heartthrob, the avatar and, at the end of the day, the id to his ego and superego brothers. They had the angelic voices and the angelic chords. He was the one they were, in essence, singing and writing songs about.
You could hardly have come up with a better 21st century rocker than Taylor Hawkins to step in for the late Beach Boy. Hawkins, too, was a drummer who grew up on a Southern California beach and looked the part. He played, and lived, with a perpetually goofy grin. One of his ex-girlfriends' dads, it turned out, was GREGG JAKOBSON, who had been Wilson's songwriting partner. Jakobson thought Hawkins' voice had a similar quality to Wilson's, which might just have been a way of saying he wasn't the best singer in his band either. Hawkins might not even have been the best drummer in his band, but he was a very very good one. And he was almost certainly the id in his band, a perfect foil for bandleader DAVE GROHL's ego.
FOO FIGHTERS are, in every possible way, Dave Grohl's band, as Taylor Hawkins, whose job sometimes included playing drum parts his boss had mapped out, would have been the first to tell you. But rock and roll is all about the id, and for the better part of 20 years, Hawkins was that. "Foo Fighters became a real rock band when Hawkins joined," STEVEN THOMAS ERLEWINE wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "The grinning, bare-chested Hawkins gave their anthems a palpable sense of swagger and fun, along with a hint of sex appeal that was largely absent from the amiable Grohl." He played with joy—good luck finding a photo of him without that grin—and power and looseness, embodying the spirit of rock inside a band that was carrying the torch for the music long past what should have been its expiration date.
He was a true believer. He was the Foos' classic rock guy, cool by virtue of not trying to be cool. "I come from QUEEN and VAN HALEN and stuff, as well as the POLICE," he told Rolling Stone. "I wasn't one of those guys trading BLACK FLAG records."
Hawkins never hid his fight with drug addiction, which had almost killed him in 2001. "I'm not here to preach about not doing drugs, because I loved doing drugs," he told Kerrang! last year. "But I just got out of control for a while and it almost got me... I go mountain biking now."
It was heartbreaking to read that and then the stories of the substances reportedly found in his system when he died last week in Colombia, where he was on tour with the band. I have no interest in speculating, except to say I can hardly imagine a more trying place for a recovering addict to be than on tour with a rock band, no matter how long he's been sober, no matter how strong he is, no matter how much support he has back home. The details of what happened are thin at best. He was 50 and lived a good rock and roll life. He was very, very widely loved. That's what we know.
A footnote on a survivor's heartbreak. "When news of Hawkins's death spread late Friday night," CHRIS RICHARDS wrote in the Washington Post, "many noticed a brutal new symmetry in Grohl's life. A drummer whose bandleader had died too young was now a bandleader whose drummer had died too young."
Tears.
Soul Love
SUMMER OF SOUL, which isn't just one of the great documentaries of recent years—it's one of the great *films* of recent years—completed its magical awards season run by winning an ACADEMY AWARD Sunday night. I'm still in awe of both the craft and the deeper resonances of QUESTLOVE's film, which is at once a concert movie and a movie about why this very concert movie wasn't made 50 years ago. Or, as Questlove put it in his emotional acceptance speech, "It's not lost on me that the story of the HARLEM CULTURAL FESTIVAL should have been something that my beautiful mother, my dad, should've taken me to when I was five years old." It's a movie about cultural erasure that corrects that cultural erasure, and the storytelling is as compelling as the music, which is great. It had the small misfortune of being the award that CHRIS ROCK was presenting when the most viral moment in Oscar history happened—and double shame on Rock for adding one final erasure by announcing the winners as Questlove "and four white guys," which might have been a slightly provocative, if unfunny, bit of cultural commentary if it had actually been true, which it wasn't. Shoutout producer JOSEPH PATEL, my first ever Oscar-winning friend. Shoutout the full crew and Questlove for making a film for the ages about music and history and Blackness and collective memory, which you should see if you haven't already, or even if you have.
Oscars also went to BILLIE EILISH and FINNEAS O'CONNELL for their JAMES BOND song "NO TIME TO DIE" (thank you JOHNNY MARR. said she) and HANS ZIMMER for his DUNE score. The latter was one of the awards handed out before the broadcast, and Zimmer celebrated from an Amsterdam hotel room, via Twitter, in a bathrobe. DIANE WARREN lost in the Best Original Song category for an unlucky 13th time; it might be time for her Lifetime Achievement Award. MEGAN THEE STALLION added an Oscar-specific verse to a live performance of the ENCANTO hit "WE DON'T TALK ABOUT BRUNO," which wasn't nominated because DISNEY didn't submit it. The night's big winner was a film that, among other things, finds hope and possibility in the power of song.
In totally unrelated news, the GRAMMYS are in six days.
Rest in Peace
British composer, turntablist and visual artist PHILIP JECK. His 1993 "Vinyl Requiem," a collaboration with artist Lol Sargent that many consider to be his masterpiece, was written for 180 record players, nine slide projectors and two film projectors... Country singer JEFF CARSON, whose 1990s hits included "Not on Your Love" and "The Car." He left music behind in 2009 to become a police officer in Franklin, Tenn.... Country and rock singer/songwriter/guitarist JIM MILLER, a founding member of both Donna the Buffalo and Western Centuries.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
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| | Spotting Yourself in 'Summer of Soul' | | By Heather Schwedel | | The Oscar-winning documentary was a surreal experience for people who looked at the screen and realized: "Oh, that's me." | | |  | | The New Yorker |
| | The Beatle Who Got Away | | By Ted Widmer | | Revisiting Stuart Sutcliffe's role in the band's breakthrough. | | | | | |  | | Tidal |
| | Breaking Up the Boys' Club | | By Celia San MIguel | | In honor of Women's History Month, five powerhouse executives talk about their challenges and triumphs in the music business. | | | | | | | |  | | Music Tech Solutions |
| | Is MLC Getting it Right in a Post-MMA World? | | By Chris Castle | | It's becoming more obvious that the Mechanical Licensing Collective is not succeeding in its Congressional mandate to build the definitive music rights database so that all songwriters get paid. | | |  | | Gawker |
| | Fiona Apple, Online | | By Hanna Phifer | | The singer has found a delightful way of connecting with her audience. | | | |  | | Down at the Crossroads |
| | The Remarkable Blues Art of Kreg Yingst | | By Gary Burnett | | Kreg Yingst is an artist, originally from Chicago, but now living in the warmer climes of Pensacola in Florida. He specializes in unusual and rather fabulous portraits of musicians, mostly from the blues, but also from jazz, rock and country. | | | | |  | | MetalSucks |
| | Losing The Drummer's Drummer | | By Emperor Rhombus | | MetalSucks editor Emperor Rhombus offers some poorly-organized thoughts on writing up the death of Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins. | | | | what we're into | |  | | Video of the day | | "Studio 666" | | BJ McDonnell | | Taylor Hawkins and the Foo Fighters play themselves in this horror comedy film that was the last major project he completed. The reviews were mixed but Hawkins "is a natural," the New York Times wrote. | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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