Picture by Kevin Winter/Getty Photographs for iHeartMedia
At the moment’s six-hour present at Wembley Stadium celebrating the lifetime of Taylor Hawkins balanced the exuberance of a rock extravaganza with the uncooked human emotion of loss. Music is the connective tissue of life. It embeds in our recollections because the soundtrack for milestones celebratory and unhappy. As a result of fashionable music is pervasive, all of us have emotions that are triggered when a sure tune performs. That’s merely the human situation.
Nowhere was this encapsulated in addition to when the Foo Fighters began their very own set to shut the present. It started, as they all the time do, with Occasions Like These. The tune begins slowly with a tempo change to frenetic midway by. At the moment, the world watched Dave Grohl battle as his feelings caught as much as him in the course of the first couple of minutes of the tune. Because the tears ran brazenly down his face he stopped, brow leaning towards the microphone whereas he gathered himself. All of us cried alongside him, and the tears shed collectively may have alleviated drought.
Maybe probably the most important relationship of my grownup life developed by a typical love of reside efficiency. We began on the 12 12 12 present for Sandy Hook aid in New York, and traveled the world collectively. The spotlight was all the time each time we may attend a Foo Fighters present. So, it was a chilly shot to the center on March 25th of this yr when the information flash lit my iPhone that Taylor Hawkins was lifeless. It appeared incomprehensible.
Instantly after studying of Hawkins’ demise, The Foo Fighters canceled their complete calendar of exhibits for 2022. A lot of their current efforts had been centered on therapeutic, and getting ready a tribute for Hawkins, each within the UK and in Los Angeles.
The Wembley Stadium present passed off immediately as a charitable fundraiser streamed the world over on a number of platforms. It was an astonishing mixture of expertise representing a subset of the individuals who had jammed with Hawkins and the Foos over the previous 25 years. The present ran 50 songs, and included units from Queen, The Pretenders, the reunited James Gang, Supergrass, and Them Crooked Vultures plus Paul McCartney, Stewart Copeland, Liam Gallagher, Nile Rodgers. and quite a lot of different visitor artist appearances.
It additionally appeared like your entire drummers’ union confirmed as much as 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 tune My Hero. Even Metallica’s Lars Ulrich performed on a stomping two tune medley of AC/DC hits with the band’s Brian Johnson on vocals.
The Foo Fighters’ tune These Days foretells what lies earlier than all of us. In it they sing “one among nowadays your coronary heart will cease and play its last beat.” Hopefully none of us faces that certainty anytime quickly. However ought to it occur, we might all be fortunate to have such a joyous sendoff as Taylor Hawkins did immediately in London.
