“We mixed and mastered it, and then we lost Taylor. It was actually very painful for me to pick up the guitar after that.” Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro on the ‘lost’ album he recorded with Taylor Hawkins and a member of AC/DC

Dave Navarro mourns the loss of his dear friend Taylor Hawkins

Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro has spoken about his grief and pain following the loss of his friend Taylor Hawkins, the late Foo Fighters drummer, and revealed that he, Hawkins, and AC/DC bassist Chris Chaney had recorded an album together before the drummer’s passing.

In September ’21, Navarro, Hawkins and Chaney unveiled their new band, NHC, and shared two songs, prog-tinged alt.rocker Feed The Cruel, and the more melancholic and melodic Better Move On. Both songs featured Hawkins on lead vocals.

The band performed together onstage publicly for the first time at Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Festival Encore weekend on October 2, 2021, and later released a performance video of Lazy Eyes, shot at the Troubadour club in Los Angeles on November 23, 2021, which also featured Foo Fighters’ Pat Smear on guitar.

NHC carried on writing and recording together during the Covid pandemic, and Dave Navarro described the project as “an awakening of everything [he] loved about playing.”

In an upcoming interview with Guitar World, the guitarist reveals that NHC had actually finished their debut album, when the  news of Hawkins’ death broke on March 25, 2022. 

“We mixed and mastered it and then, we lost Taylor,” he says. “That was in the middle of Covid, and it was actually very painful for me to pick up the guitar after that.”