Josh Freese has been the drummer for Foo Fighters for almost exactly two years, having been announced in the position back in May of 2023. (Which was, in turn, a little more than a year after the death of the band’s long-time drummer, Taylor Hawkins, in March of 2022.) Now, though, he’s reportedly been let go, announcing on Instagram that he was handed his walking papers earlier this week.
“The Foo Fighters called me on Monday to let me know they’ve decided ‘to go in a different direction with their drummer,'” Reese wrote on social media, making the whole thing sound like a banal bit of corporate downsizing, and not the line-up change to a major touring rock band. “No reason was given. : (” (Who could ever have expected The Storyteller to be so uncharacteristically un-verbose?) Freese—a veteran journeyman who’s been a member of Devo, A Perfect Circle, Guns N’ Roses, The Vandals, and many other bands, and performed on something in excess of 400 albums—noted that, “In my 40 years of drumming professionally, I’ve never been let go from a band, so while I’m not angry—just a bit sad and disappointed.” Freese noted that he’d had a blast being a member of the band for the past two years, and ended with a joke about posting a “Top 10 possible reasons Josh got booted from the Foo Fighters list.” (Also, because social media is weird, his post quickly received a comment from former Police drummer Stewart Copeland, who wrote that, “This is lucky for the five other bands that you play with.”)
Freese played several touring and festival gigs with Foo Fighters, and appeared on their latest album, 2023’s But Here We Are. The band has been largely radio silent since canceling gigs last year, in the aftermath of Grohl’s public confession to fathering a child with a woman who was not his wife. The band announced earlier this week—just a day after the call where they fired Freese, in fact—that they’ll be playing at the Singapore Grand Prix in October 2025, drummer now TBD.
