Taylor Hawkins Quotes

I don’t like guitar solos that are like, ‘Look at me, look at me!’ I like guitar solos that are little songs within the songs.

I don’t take breaks, man. In the past, I used to spend my free time getting in trouble, and now I spend it working on my music. If I’m not playing drums with my cover band, Chevy Metal, I’m working on songs for myself.

In the Foo Fighters, my main job is to be the drummer, and that’s enough.

The records that I grew up listening to had feel, and the drummers that inspired me – like Stewart Copeland, Neil Peart, Phil Collins and Roger Taylor – all had their own voice and individual style.

The one thing I do know is that I’m the best Taylor Hawkins drummer there is, and that is all I can hope to be. And when it comes to music, musicianship and skill, there is no such thing as better or worse because so much is personal opinion, and I can see that now.

I don’t have perfect pitch. My drums sound like a drummer, not a drum machine.

In hindsight, if I could go back in time and relay a message to my younger self, I would tell him to work on his time keeping, and that the job of a drummer is not to be the one that gets noticed the most on stage, or to be the fastest, or the loudest. Above all, it is to be the timekeeper.

Life is funny. If you don’t laugh, you’re in trouble.

‘Boy,’ ‘October,’ ‘War,’ ‘The Unforgettable Fire‘ and ‘The Joshua Tree,’ those records, they’re part of my musical DNA and structure.

I know I’m not Freddie Mercury or Ann Wilson, and that’s okay. You don’t have to be a great singer to sing rock and roll. That’s not what it’s about.

The Alanis Morissette tour, everybody thinks that was all sitting around, lighting candles and talking intelligently about synergy and big words. That band was so gnarly. We were such scumbags. Alanis had no idea. We were like Van Halen.

Why go on vacation when work is so much more fun.

In the studio you can auto tune vocals, and with drums, you can put them on a grid and make them perfect. I hate that sound. When someone hands me a record and the drums are perfectly gridded and the vocals are perfectly auto tuned, I throw it out the window. I have no interest in rock music being like that.

I make a living playing rock n’ roll. I’m not going to complain about anything.

I’m not trying to be the next Dave Grohl or Phil Collins.

The drummer is stereotypically the dumb guy. Maybe that’s why I always respect drummers who do more than drum.

I only started playing piano because I had chickenpox when I was about 14 and wasn’t allowed to play my drums for a whole week… We had a piano in the house, so I just sat down and played that instead.

I’ve been lucky enough to have fulfilled so many ambitions, and gone way past anything I ever thought I would do. I could never have imagined the career that I’ve had with the Foo Fighters – playing stadiums and having songs on the radio. It’s amazing, and my goal is really just to carry on playing.