Dave Navarro couldn't play guitar for a year after Taylor Hawkins died

1 August 2024, 13:13 | Updated: 1 August 2024, 14:01

Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro and the late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins. Picture: Javier Bragado/Redferns/Getty, Robert Knight Archive/Redferns/Getty

The Jane's Addiction guitarist opened up about working with the Foo Fighters drummer just before his untimely passing in 2022.

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Dave Navarro has opened up about the impact the death of Taylor Hawkins had on him.

The Jane's Addiction guitarist revealed he'd not long finished working on an album with the Foo Fighters drummer and Chris Chaney before Hawkins sadly died in March 2022, aged just 50.

"I’d just completed making a record with Taylor Hawkins and Chris Chaney," he told Guitar World magazine. "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."

The Just Because rocker, who had to pull out of Jane's Addiction's tour the same year due to his battle with long covid, went on: "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."

The One Hot Minute era Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist added: "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".

Navarro recently rejoined Jane's Addiction earlier this year and the band returned to the stage with a gig in London.

Talking about his battle with long COVID, the axeman revealed being house-bound actually helped him get back into some "out-there guitar players".

"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.

"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."

According to the artist, it also enabled him to go back through Jane's addiction's own back-catalogue and challenged him to relearn som of the material he'd forgotten.

The Been Caught Stealing rocker added: "I spent most of my days during my illness just kind of woodshedding guitar and relearning things. 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."