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Foo Fighters reveal Taylor Hawkins' successor on drums
Dave Grohl and his fellow Foo Fighters have a new bandmate.
The Foo Fighters have revealed their new drummer following Taylor Hawkins' death: Josh Freese, who was introduced during a live stream on Sunday. The band performed a sketch that dragged out the announcement by having various drummers make brief appearances before Freese is revealed to already be sitting at the drums, and he asks, "Guys, can we just like, I don't know, play a song or two?"
Freese has performed with bands like Nine Inch Nails and Guns N' Roses, and he also performed during the Foo Fighters' memorial concerts for Hawkins last year. He reflected on Instagram at the time that he wanted to use the "exact set up" as Hawkins.
"Taylor and I both grew up in Orange County … 30 mins away from one another but whenever we were in a group full of musicians (usually far away from home somewhere) we'd joke that we were the only 2 guys from O.C. in the room," Freese wrote. "We always had that funny little bond and he'd always remind me that he was tired of hearing about 'that other young guy from OC who was already making records and touring' when he was a teenager."
Hawkins died in March 2022 at age 50, and the band had been scheduled to play just hours later. After performing tribute concerts for him in September, the Foo Fighters are about to go on tour for the first time since his death with plans to drop a new album, "But Here We Are," on June 2.
"Without Taylor, we never would have become the band that we were — and without Taylor, we know that we're going to be a different band going forward," the Foo Fighters said last year. "We also know that you, the fans, meant as much to Taylor as he meant to you. And we know that when we see you again — and we will soon — he'll be there in spirit with all of us every night."