Chris Shiflett has opened up about the death of Taylor Hawkins and processing the grief of losing his friend and Foo Fighters bandmate.
Shiflett appeared on The Plug With Justin Jay where he said of coming to grips with Hawkins’ death, “It’s hard to talk about. Even still, it’s hard to talk about, because it’s still raw. There’s just a lot of s— like when anyone dies. You just go through all of these phases of grieving. what you think about is sort of evolving all the time.”
Shiflett added, “It’s made me reconsider everything I knew about Jim Morrison dying or Randy Rhoads dying. Any of those rock and roll tragedies, I understand people’s fascination with it. Taylor was this big character and meant a lot to millions of people all over the world. On one hand, I get that fascination with it, but so much I’ve seen out there [on the internet] is so completely wrong. There’s people out there saying s— like, ‘Dave [Grohl] killed Taylor by making him get the COVID vaccine.’ It’s like, ‘Ah, f—! You’re gonna turn it into that?! F—you!’…It makes you angry, because that s— is disrespectful.”
Shiflett is currently promoting a new solo track called “Born & Raised.” When asked if while doing press people awkwardly avoid bringing up Hawkins,” Shiflett said, ““It probably will be [more of a thing] when we ever get around to putting out another Foo Fighters record and go back into the promo boogie woogie. I remember that when I joined Foo Fighters, it was 1999 so it was a while after Kurt Cobain had died but I would watch interviewers twist themselves in knots trying to ask Dave about it but not ask. I would think it would turn into that kinda thing.”
Later in the interview, the topic of the reality of death came up. Shiflett said, “I remember for a long time after my dad died, you’re sad about it, but you almost, like, forget for a second…Even, like, waking up in the morning, and for a foggy second, you forget that he’s dead. And then, ‘Oh, fuck, that’s right, he’s dead.’…Being at our rehearsal studio … it’s like you just expect him to walk in the room. That’s the part that’s really bizarre. You just can’t believe it. You know it’s true, you know it’s reality — I don’t know when that sinks in for real.”
The second Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert is tonight (September 27) at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. It follows up the first show at London’s Wembly Stadium that took place earlier this month. Shiflett said the biggest moment of the show came when Taylor’s 16-year-old son Shane performed with the Foo Fighters.
“It was heavy,” recalled Shiflett. “He’s such a mini-Taylor. It was wild, and he just killed it. It was like an uplifting moment. That’s probably the one that sticks out the most, but really just the whole month getting ready for it, there’s so many little moments like that that just drive it home.”