Watch Pearl Jam Honor Taylor Hawkins With Foo Fighters Cover

Pearl Jam paid tribute to Taylor Hawkins with a cover of the Foo Fighters’ “Cold Day in the Sun” during the band’s concert Saturday at Inglewood, California’s the Forum. 

The Foos’ In Your Honor track featured Hawkins on lead vocals, and for Pearl Jam’s performance, drummer Matt Cameron — also Hawkins’ collaborator in their Nighttime Boogie Association side project — took lead on the 2005 song.

“It’s never easy when you lose someone,” Eddie Vedder said of Hawkins prior to the cover. “As you get older, you’ll notice it starts happening more and more. It’s just where you are on the timeline and where your friends are on the timeline. But sometimes, like this, it’s so unexpected. But also makes it harder because he was someone who truly, truly loved living life on this planet. So I guess the one thing we can be consoled by is the fact that he never wasted a moment, and he did live his life to the fullest. We just want more of it.”

Pearl Jam previously honored Hawkins at their tour-opening gig earlier this week, with Vedder acknowledging the bond between Hawkins and Cameron.

“He’s in my top 10 all-time drummers. He’s a fucking legend. [Dave] Grohl and me will both sit there and go, ‘He is the Neil Peart of our generation.’ He is that guy who does shit where you’re like, ‘There’s no way I could ever do that.’ He’s so precise, yet still such a rock drummer. It’s hard to do that. I just wanna gush on Matt for awhile,” Hawkins told IndieLand in Dec. 2020 when the duo debuted their Nighttime Boogie Association. “Matt is a fucking great guitar player too. As a musician, I fucking hate him. He’s so good.”

Following Hawkins’ shocking death March 25 at the age of 50, the soft-spoken Cameron wrote on Instagram, “I love Taylor Hawkins. He brought so much joy and happiness to my life. I can’t believe he’s gone. I miss him already damn. My deepest love and condolences to the entire Foo Fighters organization and to the beautiful Hawkins family.”