Music lovers gathered to pay tribute to Taylor Hawkins at Bogotá’s Festival Estéreo Picnic as news broke Friday that the Foo Fighters drummer had died just hours before the band was scheduled to perform at the festival. Eric Burton of Black Pumas announced the somber news to the crowd, calling for a moment of silence followed by applause to celebrate Hawkins’ life and legacy.
A tribute was also set up at the festival’s main stage where fans could gather to pay their respects. The Foo Fighters’ “My Hero” was played, according to The Bogotá Post, and visuals displayed on the large screen simply read, “Taylor Hawkins por siempre.” The Foo Fighters first announced Hawkins’ death on Twitter Friday night saying, they were devastated by Hawkins’ death at just age 50.
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“His musical spirit and infectious laughter will live on with all of us forever,” the band said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to his wife, children and family, and we ask that their privacy be treated with the utmost respect in this unimaginably difficult time.” Hawkins died Friday night in a Chapinero hotel located in Bogotá, Colombia, local health officials said in a news release Saturday morning.
Hawkins reportedly experienced “chest pains” that caused an ambulance to rush to the hotel, but when a health care professional tried to resuscitate him, “there was no response, and the patient was declared deceased,” according to Bogotá’s District Department of Health. The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia announced on Twitter Saturday that saying a preliminary toxicology test found substances including opioids, benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants, and THC in Hawkins’ system at the time of death. The office has yet to rule on the cause of death, saying that the investigation is ongoing.
Plans to honor Hawkins more formally at a funeral service have yet to be announced, but tributes have been rolling in all over the world from the musician’s friends and colleagues. Roger Taylor, the drummer for Queen long cited by Hawkins as the reason he first got behind a drum set, took to Instagram with a moving tribute. “He was a kind brilliant man and an inspirational mentor to my son Rufus and the best friend one could ever have,” Taylor wrote, comparing losing Hawkins to “losing a younger favourite brother.”
In another tribute, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page looked back fondly on playing with Hawkins and Foo Fighters in 2008 at Wembley Stadium, saying of the late drummer, “It was so good to play with him. I really admired him and he was a brilliant musician: his technique, his energy and spirited enthusiasm.”
