In 2022, Rufus Taylor, member of The Darkness and son of Queen drummer Roger Taylor, was one of the drummers given the honor of performing with the surviving Foo Fighters members at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts. (That’s part of the reason why some fans think he should be Foo Fighters’ new drummer going forward.) Now, he admits all the star power on the bill left him extremely nervous before rehearsals.
In a recent MusicRadar interview, Taylor said:
“I was sh*tting myself a little bit going into the rehearsals, because I knew that it was gonna be a room full of the best drummers in the world, like Omar Hakim, Dave [Grohl], and Stewart f*cking Copeland, all these monster players. Obviously, I know Dave, but Stewart and Omar, all those guys — me and Taylor used to talk about them all the time. So now I suddenly have to go in and play a nine-minute solo in front of them! I still hadn’t mapped it out in my head. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. But it all kind of went really smooth in the end.”
He also noted about how he feels Hawkins’ influence in his own drumming, saying, “When I was touring with The Darkness in the States, there were a lot of times immediately after [Hawkins’ death], I would do these flams and little fills here and there and I’d go, ‘Oh my God. I stole that from him years ago.’ I’ve always been doing it and I never thought about it. It was very weird. But seeing the Foos guys — they are like family to me — seeing them in rehearsals and then doing what my guy always did was quite surreal. But I had to just think, ‘If he was in the room, would he be proud? What would he say?’ He would just be egging me on, I know it. So that kind of thought got me through it. But yeah, it was nerve-wracking.”
Check out the full interview here.
