Dave Grohl appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show on Monday night and recalled a pivotal early show the Foo Fighters played back in 1995.
This was a KROQ festival in Los Angeles that also had the likes of Sonic Youth, Radiohead, No Doubt and Garbage on the bill. Also present was Alanis Morissette, whose drummer was a 23-year-old fellow called Taylor Hawkins.
“I met Taylor at that show,” Grohl remembered. “Our first record came out around the time Alanis’s first record came out. So we were doing a bunch of those festivals and radio shows and things. But that was the first time I met Taylor, and I was backstage. And here comes this blonde surfer dude. He’s like [all shouty] ‘Yo, dude, I love your band.’ And I knew right then I was like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be best friends for the rest of our lives.’
“And then every time we went to a festival, and I saw that Alanis Morissette’s band was playing, I’d think, ‘Oh my God, that blonde kid is here!’ So I’d grab a bunch of beers and I’d find Taylor, and I’d just find him backstage, and we became so close.”
Apparently Morissette noted that Hawkins and Grohl were becoming best buddies. “According to Taylor, [one time after a festival] when they got on their flight, he was sitting next to Alanis, and she said, ‘What are you going to do when Dave asks you to be his drummer?’ And he said [lovingly and apologetic] 'Nope, baby, I love you. I would never.' He was our drummer like in six months.
“But I thank God for Alanis Morissette because she put that amazing band together and really brought Taylor up in the world.”
Hawkins joined the Foos in 1999 and stayed until his tragic early death in 2022. Being the drummer behind one of the great drummers is hard, something that Hawkins admitted when he and Grohl appeared on the Howard Stern show on Sirius XM in 2021.
“He’s never a dick about it,” said Hawkins. “But it’s intimidating. When I joined the band I was super-intimidated because you know… I met Axl Rose the first time and he said ‘what’s it like being the drummer for the greatest drummer of the 1990s.’ And I’m like [winces] ‘hard.'"
