BLOND AMBITION

t’s a warm October afternoon when I knock on the thick wooden door of a sprawling, upscale estate at the end of a quiet cul de sac, a half hour’s drive northwest of Los Angeles. A beat-up ’86 Toyota pickup sits in the driveway. The door opens, and Taylor Hawkins greet me with a broad smile and a warm handshake. Wearing board shorts and a beat-up T-shirt, his long blond hair bouncing behind him, he takes me through his bright and stylish home, out to the back patio and into his home studio – a hip, two-bedroom guest house with a high, arched ceiling. The walls are festooned with guitars and basses of every size and make. A drum kit sits in the middle of the room, and iconic photographs of artists including Neil Young, the Eagles, Chris Cornell, Queen and the James Gang hang from every space. There are also four Grammy awards. “Make yourself at home,” he says. Flopping down on a giant couch in the middle of the room, he points out: “I’ve made a couple of records in here. We did the demos for in here.”