Josh Freese Talks Foo Fighters/Nine Inch Nails ‘Drummer Swap’

Drummer Josh Freese opened about the “drummer swap” between Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails earlier this year that saw Ilan Rubin leave Nine Inch Nails to join Foo Fighters, and Freese rejoin Nine Inch Nails after his departure from Foo Fighters. Freese talked about the situation with host Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation.

A lengthy previous stint with Nine Inch Nails is among Freese’s many credits, which also includes Guns N’ Roses, Weezer, A Perfect Circle, Sting, Devo. Rubin took over for Freese when he stopped performing with NIN in 2009.

Freese, who in August performed with Nine Inch Nails for the first time in nearly 17 years, was asked about rejoining Trent Reznor as NIN’s drummer.

“It’s not like it was an intentional swap,” Freese told Trunk. “It’s like when Trent needed a drummer when Ilan split, he was like, ‘I’m going to call Freese.’ He called me. I was like, ‘Hell yeah,’ because I missed working with Trent and I loved working with him, the last time I did it back, like I said, between ’05 and ’09. And it just so happens to be he needed a drummer because his drummer was going to join the band that I just was let go from. So it was just completely coincidence that that’s the way that that worked.”

Freese’s Trunk Nation interview also touched on his time with Guns N’ Roses during the band’s Chinese Democracy era. Full episodes of Trunk Nation air each day at 3 p.m. ET on SiriusXM’s Faction Talk.

Listen to Freese talk about the FF/NIN drummer swap and working with GNR in the clips below: