In a recently resurfaced interview with Rick Beato, former Foo Fighters drummer Josh Freese revealed his reaction to frontman Dave Grohl asking him to join the band.
“On my children’s lives, I had zero plans of being called to be the drummer,” Freese said in the April 2024 interview. “And everyone and their mother — my neighbor walking the dog, ‘Hey Josh, the Foo Fighters call you yet?’ Other people hitting me up, other drummers, Reddit forums, ‘Josh Freese is gonna be the guy.’ I’m going, ‘I don’t even know if they’re gonna continue on [after Taylor Hawkins’ death.]’”
“And most people I knew said, ‘Oh, they’re gonna have to. They’re gonna figure it out.’ I was, like, ‘Well, maybe. Who knows?’ …I wasn’t gonna be another guy coming at Dave, going, ‘So dude, if you need a drummer, I’m around. I’m just saying.’ I didn’t mention it once and was busy enough and making a good enough living already that I wasn’t freaked out about it. I wasn’t going, ‘God, I hope they call. I hope they call.’”
He continued, recalling the phone call he received from Grohl and his surprising reaction to Grohl’s offer to join the band:
“I guess it was right before Christmas that year, 2022, when I got a call from him. I got a missed call… I called him back, and we small-talked about Christmas and our kids… I said, ‘Hey, did you go record?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, we recorded a bunch of stuff. And I played drums, and I’m really happy with the way it sounds. I’m really excited about it. And we had the drummer talk. And we want you to be the guy.’
“And it felt like someone socked me in the stomach. I didn’t go, ‘Wow, yippee, this is so cool.’ I didn’t get excited like that. It was almost like I got the wind knocked out of me. And I was, like, ‘Oh my God.’ I was, like, ‘Here we go.’ Because I knew- What do I say, ‘No’? I had time to think about it and all that, but I was, like, come on.
“After the holidays, Dave and I got together and talked, and he played me the new record, we were talking, and even there’s sometimes when you go, ‘You know you’ve gotta do this, right?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ It couldn’t have gone down any other way.”
Last month, Freese revealed in a statement shared to Instagram that Foo Fighters had decided to let him go, saying that they have decided “to go in a different direction with their drummer.”
