Longtime Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has died of undisclosed causes, the band announced on Friday night. He was 50 years old.
“The Foo Fighters family is devastated by the tragic and untimely loss of our beloved Taylor Hawkins,” the band’s statement reads. “His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever.
“Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.”
Hawkins was reportedly found dead in his hotel room in Bogota, Colombia, where Foo Fighters had been set to play the Estéreo Picnic festival. His final performance was on Sunday, March 20, at Lollapalooza Argentina in San Isidro.
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1972 and raised in Laguna Beach, California, Hawkins drummed in Alanis Morissette’s touring band before joining the Foo Fighters in 1997 after the departure of drummer William Goldsmith.
He would go on to become one of the band’s most essential, long-tenured members this side of Dave Grohl, playing on eight of Foo Fighters’ 10 studio albums, from 1999’s There Is Nothing Left to Lose to last year’s Medicine at Midnight. Hawkins won 11 Grammys as a member of the band.
As a solo artist, Hawkins released three studio albums, including 2006’s Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, 2010’s Red Light Fever and 2019’s Get the Money.
Hawkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Foo Fighters in 2021, the band’s first year of eligibility. Just last month, he starred alongside his bandmates in horror-comedy Studio 666.
Foo Fighters had been set to perform at the Grammys on April 3 and tour North America later this year. Grohl and Hawkins’ interplay was central to Foo Fighters sets—the two would regularly swap lead vocal and drumming duties during shows, with Hawkins leading the band in covers of Queen’s “Somebody to Love.”
Grohl called Hawkins his “brother from another mother, my best friend, a man for whom I would take a bullet” in his 2021 memoir The Storyteller, writing, “Upon first meeting, our bond was immediate, and we grew closer with every day, every song, every note that we ever played together. We are absolutely meant to be, and I am grateful that we found each other in this lifetime.”
Hawkins is survived by his wife Alison and their three children.
