As a tribute to his late, great bandmate Taylor Hawkins, Dave Grohl has what appears to be a tattoo or drawing of the letter ‘T’ on his right hand.
Visiting Glastonbury on Saturday night for the first time since the passing of his close friend and Foo Fighters bandmate, Taylor Hawkins, Dave Grohl performed with Sir Paul McCartney.
At one point during the set, the 53-year-old showed fans a new tattoo, which many viewers at home interpreted as a tribute to Hawkins, who passed away in March.
A ‘T’ was tattooed on the back of the former Nirvana drummer’s hand, which he briefly showed attendees.
Dave Grohl Tattoo
Dave Grohl is one of the biggest Led Zeppelin fans around. Drummer Grohl, a modern heir to John Bonham, has played with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones in front of thousands while covering Zeppelin’s music. As part of the hard rock supergroup Them Crooked Vultures along with Josh Homme, Grohl even played in a separate band from Jones.
In his memoir The Storyteller, Grohl describes how he learned how to play drums by performing a seance to Bonham as a youngster. To pay homage to Bonham, Grohl decided to get his first tattoo in the style of Bonham’s three interlocking rings from Led Zeppelin IV when it came time for his first tattoo.
During a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Grohl told the magazine that he had done the first one himself at age 16. “I tried to get different colored ink to make it seem pro, but now it looks like someone put a cigarette out on my fucking arm.”
As a teenager, Grohl went on tour with D.C punk legends Scream and got a second tattoo, this time from an illegal squatter in Amsterdam.
Dave Grohl Tattoos
“It was done by an Italian guy named Andrea whose tattoo gun was made out of a doorbell machine,” Grohl explained in the same interview. “When my mother saw it, she was like, ‘David!’ I was like, ‘Mom, I’ve done a lot worse shit than this, believe me. Look at my other arm.’” Grohl talks about that experience in The Storyteller as well.
Grohl’s third and final Zeppelin tattoo came courtesy of the first check he ever received as a member of Nirvana. “Kurt and I were living with each other in Olympia. The place was so depressing,” Grohl said. “I took the $400 and bought a Nintendo, a BB gun — mind you, I was 21, not 12 — and got that tattoo. One of my fondest memories of living in that rat-shit-hole apartment was buying a dozen eggs at the A&P, bringing them to Kurt’s backyard, and me and Kurt and Buzz [Osbourne] from the Melvins shooting at the eggs. Those were the days.”
During the performance, which also featured Bruce Springsteen – can we just take a moment to appreciate how awesome this set sounded, three legends from three different eras of music, how good! – a ‘T’ can be seen on Grohl’s right hand.
Dave Grohl Arm Tattoo
As well as Bruce Springsteen joining McCartney and Grohl for the headliner, it was an emotional night for fans at Somerset festival.
Three legendary rockstars took turns shredding before warmly embracing and bowing at the end of the show.
Grohl showed the crowd his ‘T’ tattoo while McCartney and ‘Born to Run’ singer Springsteen hugged.
Hawkins’ death remains a mystery, as he was the band’s drummer since the very beginning.
During a tour in Colombia, the 50-year-old suddenly passed away, and the remaining dates of the tour were cancelled.
In a BBC broadcast, Grohl pointed out Grohl’s gesture to many fans, who noticed it on social media.
“Dave Grohl pointing to the Taylor Hawkins tribute tattoo on his hand at the end of the
#PaulMcCartney set nearly damn finished me off. RIP Hawk,” one fan posted on Twitter.
