{"id":379355,"date":"2026-04-07T10:22:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/379355\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T10:22:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T10:22:21","slug":"it-was-just-an-obvious-great-fit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/379355\/","title":{"rendered":"It was just an obvious great fit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ilan Rubin has said the \u2018drummer swap\u2019 between\u00a0Foo Fighters<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Nine Inch Nails<\/a>\u00a0involving himself and Josh Freese was \u201can obvious great fit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last July, it was announced that\u00a0Rubin was leaving Nine Inch Nails to join Foo Fighters<\/a>, just months after\u00a0Freese had been let go from the latter band<\/a>. Shortly afterwards,\u00a0Nine Inch Nails confirmed that Freese had rejoined their band<\/a>,\u00a0having previously played with them from 2005 to 2008.<\/p>\n

Now, Rubin has opened up about the sequence of events in an interview on the Go With Elmo Lovano podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no story, honestly. I think\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0just a very logical thing,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was nothing behind it. And\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0very logical in the sense that Josh played with [Nine Inch Nails] from, I\u00a0wanna\u00a0say, \u201905 to the end of \u201908.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs 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\u00a0a great thing\u00a0for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubin,\u00a0who played his first show with Foo Fighters in September<\/a>,\u00a0went on to explain that the \u2018swap\u2019 aspect was just a coincidence of timing.\u00a0\u201cAs a result of me taking that opportunity, obviously Nine Inch Nails needed a drummer,\u201d\u00a0he explained. \u201cAnd I would imagine that\u00a0at this point in time, Trent\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0wanna\u00a0spend however many weeks at a rehearsal studio playing the same songs\u00a0over and over and over\u00a0again to break\u00a0in\u00a0a new drummer.\u00a0And aside from that, Josh has already done it before, so it was very logical on that.\u00a0I mean, why else would you\u00a0go find\u00a0somebody else?\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued:\u00a0\u201cSo I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0anything particularly surprising there. But when the news leaked,\u00a0\u2019cause\u00a0it did leak, it was\u00a0kind of billed\u00a0as this drummer swap. Now that would imply that Trent and Dave were, like, \u2018Hey, you know what would be a great idea? Why not?\u2019 Which is the dumbest\u00a0thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0literally what\u00a0it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he had some regrets about how it all played out in public, adding: \u201cThe 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, \u2018Well, this came up. I\u2019m outta here. Have fun, guys,\u2019 which was not the case at all. Everyone knew what my commitments were, and I\u2019m a very, very loyal guy and I do what I say I\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time of his departure,\u00a0Freese said he was \u201cshocked\u201d and \u201cdisappointed\u201d to leave the band<\/a>, and in December,\u00a0he reiterated that he wasn\u2019t sure why he was let go from the band<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The same month,\u00a0Trent Reznor said that it was a \u201csurprise\u201d to him that Rubin was joining Foo Fighters<\/a>. \u201cAs soon as I heard the news, I thought I could call Josh,\u201d he added. \u201cHe was available and willing, and it just made sense on\u00a0a number of\u00a0levels\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last month,\u00a0Foo Fighters said the sacking of Freese was a \u201cdecision that was best for all parties\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their 12th studio album,\u00a0\u2018Your Favorite Toy\u2019<\/a>, is due for release on April 24 via Roswell Records\/Columbia Records, and later this summer they will\u00a0embark on their European \u2018Take Cover\u2019 tour<\/a>, including two concerts at Anfield stadium in Liverpool (find any remaining tickets here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll\u00a0play some\u00a0North American dates over the summer and autumn<\/a>, too, and have announced an Australia and New Zealand leg for 2026 and 2027<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ilan Rubin has said the \u2018drummer swap\u2019 between\u00a0Foo Fighters\u00a0and\u00a0Nine Inch Nails\u00a0involving himself and Josh Freese was \u201can obvious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409,1548],"class_list":{"0":"post-379355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-il","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-rock"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}