Graham Hopkins on Taylor Hawkins: "I knew him before he was playing with Alanis Morissette, so I probably saw him with different eyes than a lot of people"

Culture
06 May 22

Therapy? drummer Graham Hopkins (pictured).

The Hot Press Newsdesk

On March 25, 2022, the terrible news went out across the wires, the cables and the routers that Taylor Hawkins had died in his room in the Four Seasons Hotel Casa Medina Bogota, in the capital city of Columbia, Bogotá where his band Foo Fighters were on tour. Here, some of Ireland’s greatest drummers pay tribute.

Graham Hopkins
THERAPY?

I knew Taylor even before he was playing with Alanis Morissette, so I probably saw him with different eyes than a lot of people.

I was living out in LA, and was playing with a band called My Little Funhouse. Taylor and I both played Zildjian cymbals, and one day we coincidentally saw each other at their office and were introduced. After he got the job with Alanis Morrissette, we just kept bumping into each other. I got the job with Therapy?, and he was playing festivals and I was touring, and we’d just hang out with one another, we got on great.

You get this kind of drum camaraderie, which is always fantastic. I was always fortunate that myself and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers had been good friends - and he invited me to Slane with my solo album, which was beyond surreal. The line-up was just amazing, for drummers in particular. It was Chad, Joey Castillo, Mark Richardson and Binzer Brennan, who was playing in my band Halite at the time.

And Chad asked Taylor Hawkins to come along for a gig at SFX the night before. So instead of it being a normal drum clinic, or a masterclass, it was more like an absolute rock/heavy metal gig. Mosh pit heaven. It was absolutely spectacular. Taylor, he was just such a good guy, and an absolutely thunderous drummer.

His faces when he played, he would play with his top off, sweating, that blonde hair. You never knew what kind of shorts he’d be wearing. You could tell his absolute fantastic musicality, because he could play so hard with the Foo Fighters, and then his solo albums were so melodic, free, pure and beautiful. Above all, he was such a fantastic musician.

Any time we met, it was always cool. To see him move on and become globally well known, he always remained such a nice dude. He never got swept up in the ego - he was always just a great guy. It’s so unbelievably sad that he had to leave us. The drumming camaraderie is much more than any other instrument, it’s such a close community. It’s such a monumental loss - it just brings everybody together. We all feel it.

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