Drummer Ilan Rubin has shared his first public thoughts on last year’s so-called “drummer swap” that landed him in Foo Fighters, and had Josh Freese take his place in Nine Inch Nails.
News broke last July that Rubin was leaving Nine Inch Nails to join Foo Fighters, months after Foo Fighters had let go of Freese. At the same time, Nine Inch Nails welcomed back Freese, who had previously played with the industrial legends from 2005 to 2008.
As Trent Reznor told Consequence this past December, Rubin was still available to play the 2025 North American summer leg of Nine Inch Nails’ acclaimed “Peel It Back” tour before joining Foos, but ultimately the NIN frontman decided to welcome back Freese upon hearing of Rubin’s eventual departure.
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“Being completely honest, we’re adults and we’re professional, but we’re also people with emotional feelings and a sense of camaraderie and intent and purpose,” Reznor explained to us. “I thought it would feel better to play that last wave of tours with someone that wants to be there, and that’s what went down.”
Now, Rubin has finally told his side of the story in a new episode of the podcast Go with Elmo Lovano.
“There is no story, honestly. I think it’s just a very logical thing,” insisted Rubin. “There was nothing behind it. And it’s very logical in the sense that Josh played with [Nine Inch Nails] from, I wanna say, ’05 to the end of ’08. I auditioned in ’08, took over the next shows, I think it was February of ’09, and was with the band up until last summer. The last tour I did was a European tour of the ‘Peel It Back’ cycle.”
He continued, “When I was gotten in touch with Dave [Grohl] and management, everyone was very well aware that I had a commitment up to this point, and was I doing anything afterwards? And at the time there was nothing I knew about. The [early 2026 leg of the “Peel It Back”] tour that Nine Inch Nails had just triumphantly wrapped up was not on the books. So, as far as I knew, my contract ended on a date. After that, it was, what am I doing next? And when this happened and the opportunity presented itself and it was just an obvious great fit and a great thing for me.”
Rubin then addressed the idea of it being a “drummer swap,” and explained that the only reason that came into play was coincidental timing and circumstances.
“As a result of me taking that opportunity, obviously Nine Inch Nails needed a drummer,” resumed Rubin. “And I would imagine that at this point in time, Trent doesn’t wanna spend however many weeks at a rehearsal studio playing the same songs over and over and over again to break in a new drummer. And aside from that, Josh has already done it before, so it was very logical on that. I mean, why else would you go find somebody else?
“And in terms of wanting to feel comfortable, Trent wouldn’t have to think about anything ’cause he knows that Josh can do it and has done it. So I don’t think there’s anything particularly surprising there. But when the news leaked, ’cause it did leak, it was kind of billed as this drummer swap. Now that would imply that Trent and Dave were, like, ‘Hey, you know what would be a great idea? Why not?’ Which is the dumbest thing.
“But the dots were obviously connected where there was a switch. But it was certainly not a swap. I left my tenure with Nine Inch Nails to join Foo Fighters. Nine Inch Nails needed a drummer, and the drummer they got was the guy who was no longer with Foo Fighters. And that’s literally what it was.”
Rubin regrets the way it played out publicly, even though his intention was to remain with NIN until their final scheduled show at the time. Yet, in the long run, he believes it worked out for the best.
He explained, “The only thing that kind of really bothered me at the time when that news leaked was that it kind of gave the impression that I just kind of said, ‘Well, this came up. I’m outta here. Have fun, guys,’ which was not the case at all. Everyone knew what my commitments were, and I’m a very, very loyal guy and I do what I say I’m gonna do. So it just happened to work out better that even though I was available for that [Nine Inch Nails summer 2025] tour, it worked out better for Nails to just have Josh, who was then gonna go do the stuff in 2026.
“Had everything gone the way it was originally supposed to, I would’ve finished that American leg of the Nine Inch Nails tour, I would have had a week to rehearse with Foo Fighters and then play a festival in Jakarta. That’s what it would’ve been. That’s what everyone had agreed to, and that’s what it was. I was gonna go play with Nails, have my last tour, and then jump in and really put in the work to go learn all the songs that they wanted to do, and that was that.
“But because it worked out this way, I had so much more time on my hands, just because Trent had made the decision, ‘Well, we might as well have Josh just play now because he’s gonna be playing the next leg of the tour. Let’s just rip off the Band-Aid’ — my words, not his — ‘and just do it now rather than doing it later.’
“But that allowed me to, rather than have a week with the band, to have a couple of months to leisurely learn 40 songs or whatever it was, hang out with the guys, get to know everybody really well. And it gave us the opportunity to play these smaller kind of pop-up secret shows.”
Fans can catch Rubin drumming for Foo Fighters throughout 2026. The band has a handful of spring US shows, including a couple festival dates, before embarking on a UK/European tour in early June, and then returning to North America for a late-summer stadium tour with support from Queens of the Stone Age (pick up tickets here).
Watch Ilan Rubin’s interview on the Go with Elmo Lovano podcast below.