Friends say Taylor Hawkins wanted to tour with the Foo Fighters less

Friends have claimed late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins told them he wanted to cut back on touring with the Dave Grohl-led rockers in his final days.

One of them, Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron said rolling stone in a new report Hawkins told him, he “couldn’t fucking take it anymore.”

However, through a representative, Foo Fighters took issue with the characterization that emerged in the report this week. Hawkins died unexpectedly in March while on tour with the Foos, with the rock band canceling all of their tour dates soon after. He was 50 years old.

On Monday, May 16, Cameron said of Hawkins in a startling revelation: “He had a one-on-one with Dave and, yeah, he told me he ‘fucked up’ – c were his words.”

The Pearl Jam drummer, also known for his work in Soundgarden and several other artists, collaborated with Hawkins in the Nighttime Boogie Association.

“I guess they hit it off,” Cameron continued, “but it seems like the touring schedule got even crazier after that. … He tried to keep up. He just did whatever it took to follow, and in the end he could not follow.”

Singer Sass Jordan, whom Hawkins supported early in his career, added: “I think he was so tired. Tired of the whole game.” Another friend of Hawkins, who remained anonymous to Rolling Stone, agreed. “He finally spoke to Dave and really told him he couldn’t do this and he wouldn’t do it again,” they said.

Still, according to the report, it appears Hawkins gave in to a schedule outside of his wishes. Last June, Hawkins said rolling stone he was trying “very hard to figure out how to continue to keep the intensity of a young man in the body of a 50-year-old man, which is very difficult”.

Cameron remarked this week, “[Foo Fighters] is a big machine [with] a lot of people on the payroll. So you really have to be aware of the business side of something when it’s so big and it has an inherent pressure.” (Cameron is currently away from touring with Pearl Jam after testing positive for COVID.)

The Foo Fighters rep denied that Hawkins ever raised the issue with Grohl or the band’s management team. “No, there was never a ‘heart to heart’ – or any kind of meeting on that subject – with Dave and [Silva Artist Management]they said. “He never ‘informed Dave and [management]’ of anything like that.”

In the report, it is suggested that Hawkins’ fate was underlined when he passed out on a plane last December. But the band’s rep replied that it was “not true” that Hawkins lost consciousness. Reports at the time said an unidentified member of the Foo Fighters had been rushed to a Chicago hospital after boarding a flight to the United Arab Emirates.

Hawkins’ cause of death is still unknown after he was found dead in Bogota, Colombia on March 25 before Foos performed at the Estereo Picnic Festival. A preliminary toxicology report suggested he had 10 different substances in his system when he died.