OT: Foo Fighters Taylor Hawkins dies at 50

[EscapeRocks]

Damn

😔

[ProfD]

H8ll no. Dude was only one of the greatest rock drummers in the modern era. Totally enjoyed watching and hearing him play. RIP Mr. Taylor Hawkins.😎

[David R]

I'm not sure why his sudden passing is hitting me so hard. Maybe because I have so many friends and colleagues who are hitting 50 (or have already passed that milestone); maybe because he was a "sideman" that became integral to the sound, personality and image of the band, whether with Alanis Morrissette or the Foo Fighters; or maybe it's just the loss of his incredible spirit of joy and curiosity that even I could pick up on as a very fairweather rock 'n' roll fan. My deepest condolences to his families by blood and by music.

[MAJUSCULE]

RIP. Terrible news. They were in the middle of a tour and, if I'm not mistaken, they usually tour with their families. So very sad.

[stoken6]

Gone too young. RIP.

 

Anyone know cause of death?

 

Cheers, Mike.

[RudyS]

So sad. He was a great rock drummer and seemed to be an really nice guy as well! Rip!

[ElmerJFudd]

Great player, huge fan of music, in every conversation or interview I’ve ever seen he presented as a very nice and humble fellow, and obviously a dear friend of Grohl beyond being a band mate.  RIP 

[cp-the-nerd]

5 hours ago, stoken6 said:

Gone too young. RIP.

 

Anyone know cause of death?

 

Cheers, Mike.

Early indications point to drugs. That is not yet confirmed, though.

[yannis D]

5 hours ago, stoken6 said:

Gone too young. RIP.

 

Anyone know cause of death?

 

Cheers, Mike.

In such a young age and with no medical history, I guess it has to do with heart attack or arteries problem. I have been through this myself last year (52 y.o.) and doctors told me that one out of three deaths in the world is due to that... 

[TommyRude]

wow that's a shocker.. 

[Sean M. H.]

Yeah, that's sad...nobody seemed to enjoy playing their instrument any more than this guy, and that's ultimately what this music thing is all about.  I was actually on stage finishing a gig when someone from the audience showed us this on their phone--so we pivoted and wrapped up the night with a Foo Fighters song in tribute/memoriam...

[Doerfler]

Woke up to this news this morning, feeling very fragile now. "Times LIke These" is on heavy rotation in my head. 

 

 

[Baldwin Funster]

I'm not saying that Talyor Hawkins was a victim of this but,  when ever I hear of a famous musician dying at age 50 give or take 5 years my first thought is Coke. And Hookers. These guys quit the hard stuff and a few years later think surely just one more binge for old times sake, I mean it didn't kill me last time....I could name many that were found to have substances in their system several weeks after the news reports but I might name one erroneously so I will stop here.

[David R]

I'm honestly really tired of everyone assuming it was drug-related, until such time as there's a publicly released autopsy. It's really not cool for his wife, his kids, and his bandmates to have to navigate their grief and the armchair quarterbacking of the general public.

 

All I will add is it's Bogotá... altitude sickness and its effects could have very well affected any other medical or substance issues that were involved. He did apparently complain of chest pain to various hotel staff.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Unfortunately drugs are looking more likely now...

 

"The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia released a statement that stopped short of categorizing his death as an overdose, but said toxicology tests preliminarily found 10 different substances, including THC (marijuana), tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines and opioids."

 

Info @ CNN

 

Very sad regardless.

[Mark Schmieder]

At any rate, the altitude is close to 9000 feet there, and he was likely coming in from sea level. That's the start of the danger zone for many people.

 

I've flown into more extreme initial altitudes (over 13,000 feet for El Alto airport in Bolivia), and was careful not to exert myself the first couple of days, but anything over 4000 feet is noticeable for most people when it's a sudden change from their usual residence. I spent a week in Denver a few years ago (over 5000 feet), and have felt weaker there as well as in New Mexico where it's usually over 7500 feet (Albuquerque) or even beyond 9500 feet (Taos).

 

Many of us remember that BBC DJ John Peel died of a heart attack shortly after landing in Cusco Peru in 2004, which is at an altitude of just over 11,000 feet.

[Bill H.]

A report in a major Colombian newspaper also named heroin as one of the drugs allegedly found in Hawkins’ system, and said that forensic were “shocked” by the size of the rocker’s “enlarged heart.”

Colombian publication Semana reported that the size of Hawkins’ heart - at over 600 grams, around twice the weight of a typical adult male’s heart - played a part in his passing with a “cocktail of narcotics” in his system.

 

Now I'm wondering if high altitude was the final blow to an already precarious situation. Whatever - this is truly a sad day. 

 

 

[AUSSIEKEYS]

I guess a "Foo" finally got him.

 

We are losing so many musos lately. Seems more than usual.

[Mark Zeger]

Other than playing well, the only thing I ask of seeing a musician perform is that they look like they’re having fun. There aren’t many bands who look like they’re having a better time on stage than the Foos and especially Hawkins. I’ve unfortunately never seen them in person.   

[WheelHead]

On 3/26/2022 at 1:55 AM, David R said:

I'm not sure why his sudden passing is hitting me so hard. 

 

Very sad about the drummer. 

 

What struck me hard with an artist dying after I discovered it happened, was 22 year old Christina Grimmie who was shot 4 times signing autographs sitting at a table with a line in front of her in FL by a deranged person in 2016. Her brother wrestled the gunman to the floor where he turned the gun on himself.   Christina had millions of hits on YouTube and was making it,  winning TV talent shows (3rd place on The Voice when she started out, I believe) opening for big acts and I read connected to the likes of people like Justin Bieber. She's from South Jersey originally where I live.  What really kind of shocked me,  though unpublished, I discovered I knew her family (grandfather, grandmother, mother) when I was a child.  Her family (2 men) then were music teachers and were in a recording late-50s group though retired from the group when teaching (that even were in a movie)  (grandfather and great-uncle and another family member or two, perhaps were in the group - her relatives)

 

WH

[MathOfInsects]

I agree about the armchair quarterbacking, but it's also quite natural. It's a public figure who died too young, and he's VERY familiar to lots of us. Our entire "relationship" with him is armchair. The question of "HOW?!?" has a lot of different sides to it, and a big one is the most direct--how does a healthy-looking 50-year-old just die like that?

For those of us in similar age ranges, for better or worse there can be a little bit of "Oh, thank goodness it was drugs," not because we wish for a family to lose a father or husband, or the public to lose a widely admired figure, or because we want anyone to succumb to the cruel disease of addiction, but because it removes one layer of concern that our own family could lose us in the same way. 

That said, holy cow. What a tragedy. That freight-train of energy that he brought is such a big part of their sound and success, and by all accounts he was exactly as nice and gracious a guy as he always seemed to be in public. Very, very sad. 

[KenElevenShadows]

This struck me hard because they guy was a local guy. Super nice to my friend's kid with special needs. Just seemed like a super great guy. I am very saddened by his loss.

[KenElevenShadows]

https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/music/2022/03/26/623f6bbf22601db8758b461b.html

Quote

 

Death by drug overdose tends to be a tricky subject with rockstars because they often part take in a wide variety of different substances, this was the case with Taylor Hawkins. Unfortunately, the Foo Fighters drummer was found unresponsive inside his hotel room just hours before a show in Bogota. After nearly 24 hours of forensic investigation, the toxigology report confirmed that about 10 substances were found inside Hawkins' body. They specifically mention four of them that we will explain in order to shed some light into what possibly caused this tragedy. Before we go any further, Taylor Hawkins has a long and arduous battle with different kinds of drugs that involved heroin in most cases. This also brought him a heavy use of antidepressants, which were found inside his toxicology report.

 

THC

Considering that Taylor Hawkins was already under medication in order to control depression, THC doesn't come of as an overly strange substance inside his body. The Colombian authorities mentioned this as the first identified substance but there is no substantial evidence this can cause death in any case. We all know it better as cannabis or marijuana.

 

Tricyclic Antidepressants

This is where the substances get a little tricky because Tricyclic Antidepressants areusually prescribed to people suffering from suicidal tendencies or psychotic breaks. If this was the case with Hawkins, he shouldn't have been consuming any other type of drug in the first place. But the other two substances mentioned by the authorities reveal where the cause of death might've been.

 

Benzodiazepines

Even though this could've been another prescription drug, there is a good chance Taylor Hawkins was taking these in order to treat depression. In America, using benzodiazepines is common amongst American citizens to are under some sort of treatment. However, commbining this with other substances can be dangerous and in this case, lethal.

 

Opiates

This could be the one that likely caused Taylor Hawkins' death as opiates is the substance that comes with heroin. In his long battle against this specific drug, Hawkins has a history of suffering frmo it. Back in 2001, he was in a comma for about a week after a heroin overdose. But we still don't know what the other six substances were inside the toxicology report, chances are there is at least another one that could've caused Hawkins' untimely death.

 

 

[Rod S]

Terrible news, amazing drummer.  My age, so these kind of news always hit a little harder. 

 

Show here in São Paulo would hvae been next (today-Sunday)- my brother had tickets, was trying to talk me into it a few weeks ago, but I can't deal with Lollapalooza, too chaotic. 

 

Did not have issue with Bogota's altitude when I went, but Laz Paz is awful.  (3600 m, 12000 feet or something like that).  Thankfully my business trip are to Cartagena and Barranquilla at sea level.  

[HammondDave]

"The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia released a statement that stopped short of categorizing his death as an overdose, but said toxicology tests preliminarily found 10 different substances, including THC (marijuana), tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines and OPIOIDS."

 

That's probably it.  And we can blame the pharmaceutical industry for the amount of addicted Americans with chronic pain.  

[Doerfler]

Heartwarming tribute to Taylor Hawkins from Howard Stern 

 

 

[JohnH]

Crazy, I saw a pic on the weekend of a recent drum kit of his that said
"Foos Addiction" .

[MathOfInsects]

1 hour ago, HammondDave said:

"The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia released a statement that stopped short of categorizing his death as an overdose, but said toxicology tests preliminarily found 10 different substances, including THC (marijuana), tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines and OPIOIDS."

 

That's probably it.  And we can blame the pharmaceutical industry for the amount of addicted Americans with chronic pain.  

While I completely agree with that last sentence, I believe another statement contained a slightly more specific reference to heroin--an (the) opioid, but not necessarily the kind the good folks in the Sackler family got rich poisoning us all with.

[Mighty Motif Max]

^^ Exactly that, unfortunately. ^^

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Add me to the list of folks who weren't necessarily big Foo Fighters fans in the diehard sense, but were just gutted by this senseless loss. Dave Grohl is one of the Good Guy Dads of Rock 'n' Roll, and Taylor Hawkins was so famously his partner-in-crime, whether it was bringing some levity and fan-like wonder to self-serious awards shows, or onstage at festivals and stadiums where they wholeheartedly embraced their roles as "music fans with the best job in the world." And in a time when it feels like a lot of folks in the public eye are unflinching in their attempts to divide and subjugate and invalidate people, it seems exceptionally unfair to lose someone who made his mark being joyful, and bringing joy to millions.

 

The alternative music culture that the Foos emerged from (much like, you know, Dave Grohl's "other" band) was very concerned with cultural capital and "authenticity" and being a calculated opposition to an admittedly suffocating mainstream. And I get where that comes from. Nirvana's unexpected, enormous mainstream success was incredibly difficult for Kurt Cobain to contend with. But Foo Fighters -- and I've read that Taylor Hawkins and his unabashed stadium rock fandom was a big part of this -- didn't take themselves too seriously, they just loved what they did and had a blast doing it and never had to act cool to be cool. They were authentic in the truest sense: not staging some sort of version of what a rock band was "supposed" to be in order to make a statement, but simply doing what was fun for them, at the highest professional level.

 

I just finished reading Dave Grohl's memoir a few days before Taylor passed, and he referred to Taylor as his "twin flame," a sort of musical and personal soul mate. It's been a few days, but I'm still mourning that loss for him, and for all of us.