Mourning Joyously – London’s Taylor Hawkins Tribute Show Stirs Memories And Emotions

Today’s six-hour show at Wembley Stadium celebrating the life of Taylor Hawkins balanced the exuberance of a rock extravaganza with the raw human emotion of loss. Music is the connective tissue of life. It embeds in our memories as the soundtrack for milestones celebratory and sad. Because popular music is pervasive, we all have feelings which are triggered when a certain song plays. That is simply the human condition.

Nowhere was this encapsulated as well as when the Foo Fighters started their own set to close the show. It began, as they always do, with Times Like These. The song starts slowly with a tempo change to frenetic halfway through. Today, the world watched Dave Grohl struggle as his emotions caught up to him during the first few minutes of the song. As the tears ran openly down his face he stopped, forehead leaning against the microphone while he gathered himself. We all cried alongside him, and the tears shed collectively could have alleviated drought.

Perhaps the most significant relationship of my adult life developed through a common love of live performance. We started at the 12 12 12 show for Sandy Hook relief in New York, and traveled the world together. The highlight was always whenever we could attend a Foo Fighters show. So, it was a cold shot to the heart on March 25^th of this year when the news flash lit my iPhone that Taylor Hawkins was dead. It seemed incomprehensible.

Immediately after learning of Hawkins’ demise, The Foo Fighters canceled their entire calendar of shows for 2022. Much of their recent efforts were focused on healing, and preparing a tribute for Hawkins, both in the UK and in Los Angeles.

The Wembley Stadium show took place today as a charitable fundraiser streamed across the world on multiple platforms. It was an astonishing mix of talent representing a subset of the people who had jammed with Hawkins and the Foos over the past 25 years. The show ran 50 songs, and included sets from Queen, The Pretenders, the reunited James Gang, Supergrass, and Them Crooked Vultures plus Paul McCartney, Stewart Copeland, Liam Gallagher, Nile Rodgers. and a variety of other guest artist appearances.

setlist.fmFoo Fighters Setlist at Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert London

It also seemed like the entire drummer’s union showed up to play, with Roger Taylor of Queen, Stuart Copeland from The Police, Travis Barker, Omar Hakin, Josh Freese and 12-year-old prodigy Nandi Bushell.

Hawkins’ teenage son Shane Hawkins crushed the drums on the Foo Fighters’ penultimate song My Hero. Even Metallica’s Lars Ulrich played on a stomping two song medley of AC/DC hits with the band’s Brian Johnson on vocals.

The Foo Fighters’ song These Days foretells what lies before all of us. In it they sing “one of these days your heart will stop and play its final beat.” Hopefully none of us faces that certainty anytime soon. But should it happen, we would all be lucky to have such a joyous sendoff as Taylor Hawkins did today in London.