Ex-Foo Fighters drummer William Goldsmith tore into Dave Grohl in a new Daily Mail interview.
‘The way things were handled, and what was done to me, I do think that staying in that band would have made me feel like my soul was destroyed and I would have likely ended up dead,’ he explained.
Goldsmith revealed he was pushed into heavy drinking and drugs in a bid to cope with the pressure he was under.
And confirming he wished he had never met Grohl, he said: ‘That feeling might change if we actually sat down and talked. But that hasn’t happened yet.’
Goldsmith also discussed Dave Grohl re-recording most of his drum parts on The Colour and the Shape, and he claims he was not credited for his work on the verses of “My Poor Brain.” He also said on the 10th anniversary reissue of the album he was not credited for his work on the title track or “Down in the Park.”
Goldsmith said of the experience that he felt like he had been creatively ‘raped.’
‘It was a way of describing how it felt – when you put that much of yourself into something, and then without you even knowing, it is completely destroyed from existence,’ he said.
He added: ‘Management, the producers and Dave, I think they all wanted Dave to play drums on that record.
‘I would have been cool if it had been half me and half him.’
He claimed the experience was ‘brutal’ and he was basically dragged through the ‘coals.’
He claims that he received less performance credits so the band wouldn’t have to pay him as much money in royalties.
‘I get paid around 0.01 per cent in royalties, so every six months I get like $1,100 if I am lucky,’ he said.
‘I started to clean things up and find areas I wasn’t being paid, I was looking at digital royalties – I was figuring it out for the children.’
‘When my lawyers got in contact they said: “You played on tracks? Prove it.”
‘I reached out and said to Nate [Mendel], ‘I don’t want to be a pain in the ass but I am trying not to be crushed by the machine.’
‘He said: ‘Management said they would try and help me to resolve this issue.’
‘I have been given the impression he feels bad about the way things went.’
‘If he feels bad about how things went then why hasn’t he tried to get a hold of me?’
‘All he would have to do is sit down and talk it out with me.’
