There Goes My Hero

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been about a year since my last blog post. I fall in and out of love with writing. I get frustrated with my clunkiness and lack of finesse. I get anxious about the level of narcissism involved in vomiting random thoughts online to a faceless audience who barely care. And the internet is a fierce, vicious place.

But usually, writing seductively calls my name when something seismic occurs. When I cannot process things or when I need to heal, I find myself itching to write and make sense of the world. Today was the first time in quite some time that I had felt the calling.

When I woke this morning, I was greeted with news I did not expect to feel so profoundly . The loss of Foo Fighters’ drummer Taylor Hawkins has brought up bitter sweet memories of my teen years and I have been left bewildered and profoundly sad.

Now, I understand this sounds dramatic. In the last two years, I’ve been left scarred and bruised by far more personal events. I am aware that I did not know this man. I am aware of the concept of a grief thief and I am aware that to claim his loss as my own, is disrespectful to those closest to him. But in some strange way, his death has reawakened a teenage girl who I have not felt a connection to as a 39 year old woman.

Music WAS my youth. My teens were all about preordering the latest Oasis album from HMV. Devouring every last section of the NME. Writing weekly letters into Kerrang about how much I fancied James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins and asking them to print a picture. Memorising the lyrics to every Beatles song, dramatically scrawling them over my exercise books and feeling aggrieved and indignant when boys would mock me because they didn’t fucking understand. I lived and breathed music. I was obsessed. The mid to late 90s was a musical explosion, with Brit Pop ruling supreme and I lived for that and rock and grunge and everything in between.

I never listened to music. I felt it. I was Emo before Emo was really a thing. Every ounce of teen angst, every drop of pain and every bead of elation was wrapped up in a lyric or a riff or a bass line of one of my favourite bands. Songs snapshotted each moment of my teens. Moments such as feeling my heart exploding as I listened to a friend playing Blackbird by the Beatles on a late summer evening in his parents’ garden, my trembling hand coyly entwined with his older brother’s. Or raucous laughter, listening to Blur on my best friend’s front step on a hot summer afternoon, the Southern Comfort we has sneaked from her kitchen foaming up out of her nose.

Albums encapsulated eras in love and pain and joy. The Colour and the Shape is everything from 14-30. It is my favourite album by any band. Ever. I stand by this choice wholeheartedly and I will never change my mind. Nothing you can say or play to me will ever convince me otherwise. This album is who I truly am. I don’t say that lightly. I say it with all the gravity of a 90s emo kid in Rimmel Heather Shimmer lippy and jelly shoes. The Colour and the Shape is me – without bills and kids and all the grown up stuff. It’s where Jemma Gilbertson still resides, 25 years on. The Colour and the Shape is my heart. Every track, every note and every lyric. Multifaceted and glistening and raw.

The album is complete sensory experience. When I listen, I can see the dull light of my mum’s back landing on dark December evenings. The old red carpet. The warm smell of corned beef hash. The multi coloured lights of the Christmas tree. I can hear me shouting to my brother to come listen with me.

Taylor Hawkins didn’t play on the Colour and the Shape. He joined after it was recorded. But he played with the Foos at the Liverpool Royal Court in December 1997 and I was there. I was there at the front, in the swell of the moshpit. I felt the ebb and flow of sweaty 90s rock fans. I felt Taylor’s beats and Nate’s baseline, dictating the rhythm of my heart, the barrier at the front of the stalls digging into my stomach as I was thrown around with the crowd. And there was Dave. Dave. Ah man. Dave. He screamed through Monkey Wrench and I thought I would fucking die. I loved it. That night and that ecstasy is every adrenaline rush I ever had. There is no live band like the Foos. They have never ever disappointed me in the 8 or so times I’ve seen them.

The Foo Fighters were one of the bands who united my brother and I. A shared joy. Most of my memories of us are driving round in cars listening to music we love. Perhaps with the exception of our love for each other’s children, music remains our closest bond and I am grateful that when he text me this morning with the news, he understood how you can be changed by the death of someone you never knew.

Taylor’s death brought up so many memories of my teens and twenties: gigs and festivals and gatherings and times alone, just feeling the lyrics to February Stars burn through me. I have lost this kind of connection to music.

There is no real love in downloading the odd song or whacking a playlist on. It feels like a meaningless fumble at ten to two in a dingy night club in Preston. Convenient yet unfulfilling. I miss the rush of physically buying an album and legging it home to listen to it. Over and over and over again until a cassette got chewed up or a CD got scratched. I miss knowing a track list off by heart (If Hey Johnny Park doesn’t come after Monkey Wrench, it just doesn’t make sense to me) My kids will never experience that and it makes me so sad for them. For that is a thing of real beauty.

As I’ve got older, music is something I have on in the background. I don’t purposefully lie on my bed and drink in every single drop as I used to. I don’t let it fill my lungs and possess my body. It’s like I’ve lost the ability. Well, parenthood plus a full time job means I’ve certainly lost the time.

Taylor Hawkins death is terribly sad and I’m so sorry for his family. But for me, it brought back a feeling of who I used to be. All the sadness and joy and I wonder what Jemma December 1997 would make of March 2022 Jemma. Lots has changed and yet nothing has. Thank you Taylor Hawkins for bringing me so much joy, helping me nurse so much pain and forever connecting me with who I really am.

I have many musical heroes. Most have sadly past (Don’t you go doing it to me now, Dave. Don’t you dare) Each is a different part of me but all with the same effect: “I wonder, when I sing along with you, if everything will ever feel this real forever, if everything’ll ever be this good again”

Rest in Peace Taylor Hawkins. Your energy lives on in every song.

(And Dave Grohl, I am always awaiting your call)