THE CONCRETE ROUNDABOUT (TCR)

It seems to have fallen upon me to be the unofficial obituary writer for this place. Not a great gig.

Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has died while on tour in South America. He was 50.

I'm not going to be revisionist here, I don't like Foo Fighters, and I particularly didn't like him. But to die in a Columbian hotel room at only 50! Terrible.

I always thought that it must've been the hardest gig in music, being the drummer in a band with Dave Grohl. So I guess he must've been an outstanding musician if he could match arguably rock's greatest drummer.

As of right now, no cause of death has been announced.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

V sad.
But just being Devil's advocate...(I know you say 'arguably') but I think more people (including myself - and my instrument isn't drums) would say that John Henry Bonham would be ahead of him.

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

The point that I was trying to make, albeit very poorly apparently!, was that Hawkins held his own in a band fronted by one of the greatest rock drummers of the genre.

Listen to Nirvana before Grohl joined. A functional enough alt-rock act. 'About A Girl' from their pre-Grohl album, featuring Chad Channing, is an alright piece of proto-grunge. Then listen to anything on 'Nevermind', especially the opening of 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. I'm guessing that even a non-musician can detect a slight difference. So to even think that you'd like to be the drummer in a band put together by Grohl...


Regarding your point re' Bonzo. I've never thought of any aspect of the arts as a competition. You either like something, or you don't. I like 'Nevermind', it's a brilliant piece. I adore Led Zeppelin, but I've never thought that Nirvana would've been improved by having Bonzo behind the kit.

I've already mentioned that I didn't like Hawkins. Something about him that I just couldn't warm to, but as a musician he was outstanding. There's a clip on YouTube of Foo Fighters covering AC/DC's 'Let There Be Rock' for a BBC session. The drumming is outstanding.

As I suspected, but was waiting for it to be confirmed, he appears to have died of an overdose. He had form in this field of self-indulgent rubbish, after spending a fortnight in a coma years ago after overdosing on heroin.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

Was wondering the same.

Topper Headon (Clash's best drummer) had a (severe) heroin problem and thank God he survived it - but he was never the same afterwards.
Strummer used to talk about how, in retrospect, daft it was to sack him 'because he was a junkie' and how he should have been helped. All the band knew but didn't support him.
Wonder what the situation was here.
Mind you 'helping a junkie' is easier said than done - don't get me started on Dee Dee Ramone.... (Who, if you didn't know, died of a smack overdose after something like 6 years 'off it'.)

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

If someone is a drug addict, it's easy to say "we should have supported him/her/they". But junkies are spectacular pains in the arse, and the addiction makes them dissembling, lying, whining, pieces of shit. Fixing a junkie is too big a job for civilians.

I am sympathetic towards addicts but i don't think it's fair to put the burden of helping them on their families, friends or co-workers. That's too big an ask. It takes expert intervention.

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I don't need your ill-informed, half-baked, idiotic opinions. I have plenty of those myself.

This X10.

Having had extremely close contact with addiction I can confirm that addicts are immense pains in the aforementioned posterior. There's nothing that non-professionals can do, nothing!

We seem to have drifted away from the original topic of this thread somewhat. Someone had died that didn't need to.

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

Many (most?) heroin deaths are after a break as they lose their tolerance. Philip Seymour Hoffman did the same.

I was listening to a podcast on the way home yesterday where they were discussing his untimely passing. Apparently he'd been clean for over 20 years. So your point regarding losing your tolerance is true. He had over 10 different drugs in his system.

Here's that clip of Foo Fighters covering AC/DC I was mentioning earlier. Watch how Grohl almost never takes his eyes off Hawkins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VeflGoMOv0

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They say don't kick a man when he's down. Show me a better time.

[quote="keyser soze"]If someone is a drug addict, it's easy to say "we should have supported him/her/they". But junkies are spectacular pains in the arse, and the addiction makes them dissembling, lying, whining, pieces of shit.

I won't disagree. BTW.... let's substitute 'certain politicians' for 'junkies' and "public service" for 'addiction'.

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Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment