Taylor Hawkins, Ringo Starr Featured in Upcoming ‘Let There Be Drums!’ Documentary
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A new documentary, Let There Be Drums!, will feature interviews with Ringo Starr, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, and late Foo Fighters member Taylor Hawkins. Deadline reports that the Hawkins segment may be the drummer’s final filmed interview.
Filmmaker Justin Kreutzmann, who is the son of the Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann (also featured in the doc alongside the Dead’s Mickey Hart), helmed the picture, which will come out Oct. 28. Other featured stickmen include the Police’s Stewart Copeland, Jane’s Addiction’s Stephen Perkins, and former Guns n’ Roses member Matt Sorum.
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Kreutzmann decided to make the film to better understand his dad — and his dad’s instrument — but an interaction with Hawkins made it something bigger. “Some might say this was ‘the film I was born to make,’ others might call it therapy,” he tells Rolling Stone. “Since I was young and my dad gave me that first Super-8 camera, filmmaking is all I’ve wanted to do. My school grades could tell you that. And obviously growing up around the Grateful Dead, my first movies were the people and the crazy things going on backstage, which leads us to Let There Be Drums!”
“It started as a fun little film with all the drummers I’ve gotten to know over years,” he continues. “It wasn’t until Taylor Hawkins stopped our interview and said, ‘Maybe this isn’t for this documentary, but what was your home life like?’ I found from then on, I was having a dialogue with these amazing drummers instead of just a Q&A. They were as interested in hearing about my dad, Jerry Garcia, and the Grateful Dead as I was about their bands and their lives. So a really interesting thing happened, the film became more about family, but these families just happened to be drummers.”
The elder Kreutzmann and Hart both serve as executive producers.
In other Hawkins news, Axl Rose dedicated the most recent Guns n’ Roses tour to the late Foo Fighter’s memory. “It’s just a simple gesture n’ it’s awkward dealing with the gravity of something like this, but in an effort to pay r respects we’d like to dedicate this tour to our friend Taylor Hawkins,” Rose wrote in a tweet. “Taylor was a really great guy and it was always great to see him! He was a great n’ always welcome part of touring these last few years.”
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