Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins was found dead in a Colombian hotel Friday as heartbroken fans stood outside in shock.
The band announced Hawkins’ death on Twitter late Friday. He was 50 years old.
“His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever,” the band wrote.
Shortly after the tragic announcement, the band backed out of its scheduled Friday performance at the Picnic Stereo Festival in Bogotá, Colombia. The band recently played Lollapalooza Chile on March 18 and Lollapalooza Argentina on March 20. They are slated to headline Lollapalooza Brasil on Sunday.
Police vehicles, an ambulance, and fans were gathered outside the Four Seasons Casa Medina Hotel where Hawkins was believed to have been staying.
Authorities in Colombia have not commented on Hawkins’ death. The U.S. Embassy in Bogota expressed its condolences in a tweet.
“It was a band I grew up with. This leaves me empty,” Juan Sebastian Anchique, 23, told The Associated Press as he mourned Hawkins outside the hotel.
Born Oliver Taylor Hawkins in Fort Worth Texas in 1972, Hawkins was raised in Laguna Beach, California. He played in the small Southern California band Sylvia before landing his first major gig as a drummer for Canadian singer Sass Jordan. He then spent the mid-1990s as the touring drummer for Alanis Morissette before Grohl asked him to join the Foo Fighters.
It’s the second time Grohl has experienced the death of a close bandmate. Grohl was the drummer for Nirvana when Kurt Cobain died in 1994. After Grohl, Hawkins was probably the most prominent member of the group, appearing alongside Grohl in interviews and playing prominent roles in the band’s videos.
The band just released their horror-comedy “Studio 666” in February. In the film, the members poke fun at themselves in the haunted house they rented out to work on their 2021 album “Medicine at Midnight.”
“It is something I never wanted to or expected to do. It just kinda happened,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl told The Post. “A friend of mine … had a meeting with these people that said that they want to make a horror film with Foo Fighters. I was like, ‘That’s the stupidest f–king idea I’ve ever heard in my life. There’s no way we’d do that s–t.’
“When it comes to writing records and making music, we take that very seriously,” Grohl told The Post about the band’s longevity. “When it comes to getting onstage and being a live band, we take that very seriously — we want to be the best f–king live band you have ever seen in your life. We play those two-, three-hour shows, give 150% every night.”
Hawkins is survived by his wife Alison and their three children.
Fellow legends like Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons took to Twitter to respond to rock music’s loss.
“What an incredible talent, who didn’t also need to be so kind and generous and cool but was all those things too anyway,” tweeted Finneas, Billie Eilish’s brother, co-writer and producer. “The world was so lucky to have his gifts for the time that it did.”
With Post Wires
