Taylor Hawkins never treated drumming like background noise. Even as the Foo Fighters’ powerhouse behind the kit, he kept digging into the records that shaped him, and one of the biggest was Genesis’ live album Seconds Out. In a 2006 interview with Modern Drummer, Hawkins said he was “in a prog phase” and singled out early Genesis, adding: “Actually, Seconds Out is one of my drum bibles. It’s one of my favorite-sounding drum records too.”
That praise makes sense once you hear what Seconds Out is built on. The double live album was released in October 1977 and pulled from performances recorded in Paris, Glasgow, and Leicester. It captured Genesis in a transitional era, with Phil Collins handling lead vocals, Chester Thompson on drums for most of the performances, and Bill Bruford appearing on “The Cinema Show.”
Hawkins was not speaking as a casual fan trying to sound cool. He admired the way those drummers made the parts feel muscular, musical, and alive all at once. In the Far Out piece, Hawkins explained that he loved the album’s sound and the way it showcased Collins, Thompson, and Bruford working in a setting where the drums were not just keeping time but helping drive the entire performance.
He also made clear that his admiration for Genesis was practical, not just emotional. Around the same time, he said he had “ripped off” a groove from Genesis’ “Wot Gorilla?” for the Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders song “Louise,” showing how directly those records fed into his own writing. That kind of borrowing was never about theft in the ugly sense; it was Hawkins openly tracing his musical DNA back to the bands that taught him how to think rhythmically.
What makes Seconds Out stand out is how layered it is as a drumming record. It is not only a showcase for raw power; it is a document of control, taste, and interplay. The album was Genesis’ second live release and, by many accounts, one of the definitive live statements of their prog era. It featured a lineup that bridged the band’s older material with the then-newer sound of A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering, which is exactly the kind of balance Hawkins seemed to love.
That matters because Hawkins himself was a drummer who valued feel as much as flash. He became famous for the firepower he brought to Foo Fighters, but his own comments show a musician who was constantly studying how great players turned drums into a voice. For him, Seconds Out was not nostalgia. It was a manual.
After Hawkins died in 2022, those comments gained extra weight. They now read like a snapshot of a player who never stopped being a student, even after becoming one of modern rock’s most admired drummers. His affection for Genesis says a lot about his ear, but it says even more about his hunger to keep learning from the past while making something unmistakably his own.
