Dave Navarro says it was “painful” to play guitar after Taylor Hawkins died
Dave Navarro has opened up about struggling to pick up the guitar again following the death of his close friend and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.
The pair had debuted their new band NHC just months before Hawkins tragically passed away in March 2022. In a new interview with Guitar World, the Jane’s Addiction guitarist says that the loss left him in such pain that he refrained from playing for an entire year.
READ MORE: “After a while, my ear tires of it”: Andy Summers says Yngwie Malmsteen’s music is “too shreddy”, but calls Eddie Van Halen a “genius”
“I’d just completed making a record with Taylor Hawkins and Chris Chaney [NHC bassist],” Navarro recalls. “We mixed and mastered it, and then we lost Taylor. That was in the middle of COVID, and it was actually very painful for me to pick up the guitar after that.”
“I didn’t pick up the guitar for about a year. He was such an inspiring artist – not only was he a phenomenal drummer, he was an amazing songwriter and lyricist… just one of those humans that everybody loved.”
He says, “After losing Taylor I didn’t play for a long time. Then, about a year into it, I picked up the guitar, started playing some cover songs, and just kind of got used to the instrument in my hand again.”
Taylor Hawkins died in a hotel in Bogotá, Colombia before the Foo Fighters’ scheduled performance at Festival Estéreo Picnic in March 2022. Tributes poured in from around the music world, and two massive concerts were held in his honour in London and Los Angeles.
According to Navarro, studying some of his favourite musicians while coping with long COVID was key to helping him rediscover his love for the guitar.
“Since I had the illness, I was housebound for a long time, and that’s when I really started getting into some out-there guitar players I normally didn’t study, like [session great] Jay Graydon,” he explains. “I started studying Jay, and I started diving deep into Van Halen, tone chasing, and reading everything I could about the gear [Eddie Van Halen] used, may have used, or that’s rumoured to have been used.”
“I spent most of my days during my illness just kind of woodshedding guitar and relearning things,” says Navarro. “I played Jane’s Addiction records front to back and tried to relearn things I’d played in the ‘80s and ‘90s that I’d forgotten.”
“That was a challenge, and that was fun. And because I knew I was gearing up to join again at some point, the band wanted to start working on new music. I was well enough to go in a studio and sit in a chair. I’d sit for 10 hours, so that was easy, and we wrote some new music.”
Last week, Jane’s Addiction released Imminent Redemption, the first new music from their original line-up in 34 years. The band is also set to embark on a co-headlining North American tour next month with Love & Rockets.
The post Dave Navarro says it was “painful” to play guitar after Taylor Hawkins died appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
