When Josh Freese was a 14-year-old drum prodigy attracting his first bit of press, a reporter asked what his career goal was. “I want to become a household name,” he offered grandly, before correcting himself. “I just want to play drums, and I want to do it the rest of my life.”
Four decades later, Freese is still playing — and while his name may not be a familiar to everyone, in music industry circles he’s a superstar of sorts, logging time in rock’s biggest bands, including Guns N’ Roses and Weezer. Freese has reinvigorated the veteran alternative acts Devo and the Replacements, helped start the art-metal supergroup A Perfect Circle and played on hundreds of albums for artists as disparate as Bruce Springsteen, Katy Perry, the Dwarves and Lana Del Rey.
“There’s a truism that ‘a band is only as good as its drummer,’” noted Sting, who’s worked with Freese onstage and in the studio since the mid-2000s. “Any band that Josh graced with his presence on the kit was fortunate indeed.”
A versatile drummer, Freese is equally adept at playing loose and dirty or with polished precision. Mostly, though, his specialty has been fitting into typically self-contained rock groups. “The trick is not sounding like you’re a hired gun,” said the producer Brendan O’Brien. “You want it to seem like you’ve always been part of the band — which is what Josh is so good at.” That talent has been tested lately, as Freese recently exited one huge outfit, Foo Fighters, and joined — or rather, rejoined — another in Nine Inch Nails.
Freese credits his enduring success to “a combination of hard work, talent and luck,” but even at his level, there are no guarantees. “As a hired musician, especially a drummer, you have to deliver and deliver consistently,” he said. “Otherwise, whatever opportunity you have, whatever door is open, will shut really fast. So, you’ve always got to be ready.”
On a late July afternoon in the Long Beach, Calif., neighborhood of Bluff Park, Freese led the way through his 120-year-old Craftsman home a few blocks from the beach, where he and his wife, Nicole, have lived since 2008, raising their four children. Walking into a colorful backhouse studio — adorned with a dizzying array of rock ’n’ roll bric-a-brac — Freese was quickly surrounded by a trio of his beloved standard poodles.
With his bleached-blond crop and sun-kissed countenance, Freese, 52, has the air of an aging surfer, minus the Zen calm. In a hyperactive whirlwind, he recapped his typically hectic schedule: a recent tour with A Perfect Circle, upcoming gigs with his long-running punk band the Vandals, work on new albums by Billy Idol and Sting, plus a solo record of his own, a second volume of one-minute songs.
Even as he chatted, Freese paused periodically to field phone calls from producers and bands seeking his services. He suddenly had time to fill, following an unexpected turn of events. “You mean getting fired?” he said and chuckled, referring to his shock dismissal from Foo Fighters this past spring, less than two years after joining the group amid considerable fanfare.
Freese, who’s known the Foos leader Dave Grohl since Freese was 17, admitted the job had carried a heavier burden than normal. “I’m coming in as Dave Grohl’s drummer, and the guy that’s supposed to save the day after the beloved Taylor Hawkins died,” he said, referring to the band’s drummer since the late ’90s, who died on tour in 2022. Taking over for Hawkins, with whom he was close, left Freese feeling “like I had to be firing on all cylinders all the time.”
Playing marathon three-hour-plus concerts with Foo Fighters was physically challenging, but rewarding. Which is why Freese felt blindsided during a band call in May, when Grohl canned him without an explanation. “Looking back, it was probably more an issue with their management,” Freese said, choosing his words carefully. (Foo Fighters declined to comment, though in a recent note to fans Grohl praised Freese’s “thunderous wizardry.”)
Freese made light of his firing, breaking the news online and publishing a cheeky list of “Top 10 possible reasons Freese got booted from the Foos.” As for his feelings about the group now, he shrugged: “It wasn’t music that I really resonated with.”
It was an unusual situation for the musician, whose passions have guided him from the beginning. Freese’s mother, Trisha, was a classical pianist, and his father, Stan, a tuba player and bandleader at Disneyland. (His younger brother Jason, a prolific multi-instrumentalist, is an auxiliary member of Green Day.) As a toddler, Freese would march down Main Street U.S.A. with father’s band, a pair of drumsticks in his hands. He got his first proper kit when he was 7 and immediately started playing along to his favorite song on the radio: “Whip It” by Devo. Soon, Freese was impressing his musical teachers, consuming Modern Drummer magazine and becoming a self-described “drum nerd.”
When he was 11, his father took him to the annual National Association of Music Merchants trade show, where Freese caused a stir playing at the Simmons booth, landing an endorsement deal with the electronic drum manufacturer. “It was like, oh, come see this cute little third grader play,” he recalled. “But that’s where I met a lot of my drumming heroes like Vinnie Colaiuta, Terry Bozzio and Jim Keltner.”
Keltner remembers it well: “You could tell that he was going to be a monster,” he said. “He was precocious, but he had a sweet nature. I figured I’d be reading and hearing about him before too long.”
At 12, Freese joined the musicians’ union and turned pro, playing shows with the “Star Search” junior-winning band Polo. At 16, he hit the road, backing up the soap opera star and pop hitmaker Michael Damian. He’d planned to attend the Berklee College of Music but instead joined the punk rock jokesters the Vandals in 1989.
“The Vandals were smart and funny as hell and saved me from music school and a life playing little jazz gigs,” Freese said. “I came to realize people went to Berklee hoping to do what I was already doing — playing shows and recording — so I just kind of stuck with it.”
He got a big break playing with one of his heroes, Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, on his first solo album and tour in 1993. A couple of years later, Freese fulfilled another dream when he became a member of Devo. In lieu of an audition, Freese sent the band a photo of himself on his eighth birthday excitedly opening presents, including a copy of the group’s “Freedom of Choice” LP.
“We saw that and said, ‘All right, you got the job,’” recalled Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, laughing. “Before Josh joined, I’d spent a lot of time scoring films, so I had my own energy and direction. But he was so enthusiastic about Devo that it really got me enthusiastic in turn. In that sense, he’s one of the best collaborators I’ve ever met.”
In 1997, Freese was tapped by Axl Rose to help restart Guns N’ Roses with a new lineup, and earned a writing credit on its long-gestating “Chinese Democracy” album. Throwing himself further into session work, Freese spent much of the 2000s in the studio playing on hits — often credited, sometimes not — for Avril Lavigne, Puddle of Mudd, Evanescence, Queens of the Stone Age and Michael Bublé.
“With the great studio musicians, it’s not about keeping time or technique, it’s about a performance,” said the producer Bob Rock. “And Josh really knows how to give a performance.”
Freese is also adept at performing on social media, showing off his outgoing personality in videos both comedic (gags where he jump-scares his annoyed wife) and heartfelt, like a video of him visiting his teenage daughter on her first day working at In-N-Out.
Freese acknowledged (and is sometimes bothered by) his reputation in the music business as “a good hang.” “I’ve heard people say, ‘Oh, Josh Freese is a funny guy, that’s the reason he gets work,’” he said. “Well, I’m a pretty good drummer too. I mean, I’ve got friends that are fun to hang out with, but I don’t want them playing in my band or on my record.”
It’s a safe bet that the Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor believes Freese is a pretty good drummer. In early August, he asked Freese — who’d previously played with the group from 2005 to 2008 — to jump onboard a tour at the last minute. Nine Inch Nails’ drummer, Ilan Rubin, was headed to Foo Fighters.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Freese said of the strange game of musical chairs. “But Ilan’s a phenomenal drummer, a phenomenal musician. He’ll be perfect for the gig.”
Onstage on opening night, Reznor marveled at Freese’s facility as the crowd roared for the drummer, announcing that he’d “rehearsed with us one day — it took us months to learn this [expletive]!”
As it happens, another big rock act, Pearl Jam, recently lost its longtime drummer, Matt Cameron. Once again, Freese is being touted as the favorite for the job.
He doesn’t know if an offer to join the grunge group will come, or if some other opportunity will present itself. “But whatever happens, I’m going to be out there playing,” he said. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
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