Dave Grohl’s latest tribute to Foo Fighters’ late, great drummer Taylor Hawkins was a bloody special one.
The Foo’s headlined Ohana Festival on Sunday night (October 1st) at Dana Point in Southern California, which is roughly 11 km away from Laguna Beach, where Hawkins was raised from the age of four after his family moved there from Texas.
It’s become a tradition at Foo Fighters shows for Grohl to dedicate the ‘There is Nothing Left To Lose’ track ‘Aurora’ to his late best mate - who wrote the song with him - but the Sunday night tribute was a particularly special one, considering they were playing in Taylor’s “backyard.”
“He is, indeed, the hometown hero of this show, everybody fucking give it up for Taylor Hawkins right now,” Grohl told the audience, which was met with a huge applause.
“It’s a trip. I came down here with him every once in a while, hung out at the house he grew up in. Hung out with his mom, hung out with his dad. Hung out with his brother and sister.
“It was weird because I never really understood Taylor Hawkins until I fucking came to Laguna. And then I was like ‘Oh, yeah, okay, I get it. That’s who you are!’
“We had good times down here, so I knew that tonight would be kind of heavy because we are here where Taylor grew up, but I want this next song to be a celebration of his life, all right?”
With emotion in his voice, Grohl added: “This is the first song that we wrote together and we’ll play it every night for the rest of our lives.”
The band then launched into the 1999 track ‘Aurora’ - have a watch up top.
