Hi folks. It was one year today that we lost Taylor Hawkins, drummer and occasional singer of Foo Fighters. His best friend and boss Dave Grohl would switch places and get behind the drum kit, while Taylor would sing any number of songs, including those by Queen. Why not?
Taylor loved Queen as they were the first band he saw and from that moment, he wanted to play drums. He grew up in an area where reggae was the order of the day so, listening to hard rock was his punk rock in Palo Alto California at the time. Besides Queen, he also loved Rush and so do I. After all, I am Canadian and from Toronto Ontario. However, Queen will always be the classic band to come home to, for the both of us and yes, I am a drummer too. I can’t play as well as Taylor, Roger Taylor or even Dave Grohl, but I can at least keep the beat. I’m a guitarist and like both Dave and Taylor, I can sing and singing is more preferable to me, than wanking away on 6 strings, so I stick to rhythm, providing the crunch. Anyway, I digress.
The reason I am doing this post is rather obvious, but also because since I had done a search on Youtube, I have found 2 live versions of Foo Fighters doing the Queen classic Somebody to Love, with Taylor on lead vocals and Dave pounding the skins. I also listened to an episode of a podcast called Ongoing History of New Music, where the host talked to all 5 members of Foo Fighters about the release and making of Sonic Highways album and the TV series. The host is Alan Cross and the show looks at things from the alt-rock or alternative rock universe. Even if you are not a fan of the band or sub-genre being spotlighted, you always learn something and you will love hearing the stories. Alan Cross is very good at telling stories and making them entertaining and from what I hear, he is also a nice dude. I believe that!
Shortly after Taylor died, Alan did an episode looking back on the life of the Foo’s drummer and thankfully, it is available to listen to. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ongoing-history-of-new-music/id1201968027?i=1000555841513
While I’m at it, let’s listen to Alan and his interview with all 5 members of Foo Fighters in 2014, from their studio. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ongoing-history-of-new-music/id1201968027?i=1000390064231
When I had heard about Taylor’s passing it was early on March 26th and it had come from a Youtube channel I subscribe to, in order to get rock and metal news. I was up from then on and looking for anything I had in my iTunes library and anywhere else on YouTube, to listen to in order to celebrate the life of Taylor Hawkins. I had found some things, but what I really wanted to have was Foo Fighters music on my phone, as payed downloads from iTunes that I could more or less keep forever. So, I had set about collecting each Foo Fighters album and anything else I could find that was lying around from iTunes, by the end of June 2022.
When the tribute concerts to Taylor had happened in September, I was glued to my phone and to a YouTube channel, which had happened to stream it and unfortunately, that stream is no longer up. That was the first concert from Wembley and I didn’t hear the second one from Los Angeles:, but Roger and Brian from Queen had showed up at both shows, along with the surviving members of Rush and even Danny Carey of Tool played with the members of Rush. Both shows had people from many of the bands I had grown up with and even newer bands who, also may regard Queen as an influence. I can’t go through the entire list here, but I can tell you that the list of musicians was as large, or larger than the Freddie Tribute in 1992. However, I will mention Joe Walsh, who is also a ham, or amateur radio operator like me. I having talked with him yet, but I hope to do so some day on the air. Altho, I imagine that it won’t be about music and about more mundane things.
Anyway, let’s get to the reason I am writing this post in the first place. This may be the last time Taylor got to sing this Queen song, before he died and lucky for us, this version is good. RIP. https://youtu.be/-0HhKXDDSnU
All Gord's People 