Dave Grohl discussed Foo Fighters parting ways with Josh Freese for the first time, saying that their decision to split from the drummer “didn’t happen overnight.”
Freese joined the band as their drummer in May 2023 following the death of Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. In May 2025, Freese announced he had been let go by the Foo Fighters. The band decided “to go in a different direction with their drummer,” Freese wrote on Instagram at the time, and added that “no reason was given.”
In a new interview with Zane Lowe, Grohl discussed the Foo Fighters’ switching drummers following Hawkins’ death, giving some context from a drummer’s perspective. He explained how Nirvana had five drummers, and he was their fifth, and that while Foo Fighters has had four drummers, Hawkins was their drummer for 25 of the 30 years they’ve been a band.
“So continuing on after Taylor was really complicated, not just for us, but for any drummer that was going to come in to like, you know, fill his shoes,” Grohl said. “And so with Josh Freese, Josh is a consummate professional. He has a storied career of playing with everyone from Michael Bublé to the Offspring … He’s had thousands of studio recordings.”
Then they went on tour “and we had such a blast, we had such a great time,” he added. After about a year and a half of that tour run with Freese, the band took a break and during that time, the group discussed their next moves for around half a year before finalizing their decision.
“In those six or seven months, as a band, we talked about what to do next, a new direction, and we thought, ‘OK, let’s call Josh and let him know that we are going to move on with a different drummer,’” Grohl said. “We called, and we told him, as a band — all of us called, it wasn’t just me.”
Grohl said they expressed gratitude for their two-year run with the drummer. “Basically, we called Josh, and we were like, ‘Hey man, that was awesome. That was such a blast, thank you so much, but we’re going to move on and find another drummer.’”
While Grohl did not detail the specific reasons behind their decision, he told Lowe that after they finished their call with Freese, that they decided not to address their parting of ways with him publicly. “After that, we didn’t make a press release, tweet anything or do interviews. We didn’t say anything,” he said. “Since then, there’s been a lot of talk about it, but I think Josh said it best when he was like, you know, he didn’t feel our music really resonated with him, and that’s really important, right?”
Freese has since rejoined Nine Inch Nails, and Foo Fighters enlisted Nine Inch Nails’ touring member Ilan Rubin as their drummer. “It’s like we feel like a band again, man,” Grohl told Lowe of Rubin joining the group.
Foo Fighters are readying the release of their 12th album, Your Favorite Toy, which arrives April 24, and released the title track last week. The band performed the song, sans Pat Smear who is recovering from a bizarre gardening accident that led to a broken foot, on The Graham Norton Show on Friday.
