Josh Freese is Foo Fighters' new drummer, replacing late Taylor Hawkins
Longtime session musician Josh Freese has joined Foo Fighters as the band's new drummer after the 2022 death of Taylor Hawkins. Credit: Getty Images / Scott Dudelson
In a humorous black-and-white video Sunday, the hard-rock band Foo Fighters introduced drummer Josh Freese as successor to Taylor Hawkins, who died in March last year at age 50 of cardiac arrest.
A segment of the free livestream event “Preparing Music for Concerts” on the platform Veeps.com, posted to Twitter by an unrelated producer and sound engineer, opens with the 2021 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees chatting at a rehearsal session. A knock at the door reveals Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, whom the band members greet warmly. They exchange pleasantries and Smith informs them, “There’s a white Mercedes blocking [my car].”
“Oh!” says Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl. “OK. Is that you, Rami?” he asks Rami Jaffee, the band’s keyboardist. “OK, we’ll be there in a second.” Smith leaves and Grohl muses, “I love Chad. You remember, like, that tour we did with him? That was, like 24 years ago. …”
Another knock brings Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee. “Dudes!” he exclaims, brandishing a bag of takeout food. “I got the P.F. Chang's!”
“Thanks! Ah, you’re the best!” Grohl says. “Put it in the kitchen for us, would you?”
Lee exits and moments later Tool's Danny Carey walks in, informing the band, “I groomed your poodles for you.” The camera tilts to show two standard poodles with classic cuts, to the band’s approval: “Ah, you didn’t have to do that!” Grohl adds, “What a bro!”
“Just leave 'em out back. That’s fine,” Grohl tells Carey. “Did you know that he grooms poodles?” he asks the band after Carey leaves. Then a loud, annoyed voice yells, “Excuse me!!”
The band members turn toward the drum kit, where Freese implores, “Guys, could we just, like, I dunno, play a song? Or two? Something?”
“Yeah, man. Sure, Josh,” Grohl replies, to general consent. The band then launches into a blistering version of their 2002 song “All My Life.”
Freese, 50, a longtime session drummer with bands including Blink-182, Devo, Guns N' Roses, Nine Inch Nails, The Offspring, Paramore and others, played with Foo Fighters at both the London and the Los Angeles all-star tribute concerts for Hawkins in September.
The band on Wednesday begins its world tour in support of its upcoming album "But Here We Are."
