Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl says the band’s new drummer, Ilhan Rubin, was able to play more untethered when he left Nine Inch Nails.
The saga of Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin leaving the industrial band to play for the Foo Fighters has played out very interestingly. Now, Dave Grohl is speaking out about the change, saying that Rubin finally “started spreading his wings” when he joined the Foos.
In a new interview with Studio Brussel, Grohl offered some “funny” insight into the differences between playing with his band and playing with NIN. Essentially, he boiled it down to stylistic differences that require separate drumming approaches.
So [Ilan] was with Nine Inch Nails for 17 years or something [before he joined the Foo Fighters],” Grohl explained. “And with Nine Inch Nails, their music, it requires this very sort of pattern-specific grooves and rhythms, and the drumming, it has to be very linked up, and click track and everything like that. And it just has to be mechanical.”
So when he joined our band, it was the first time that he hadn’t played live with a click track in 17 years, “Grohl continued. So he starts playing with us, and he still had this mindset that it has to be sort of patterned and sound like the record. I’m a drummer too. He would do something, and I’d go, ‘Ilan, keep doing that.’ He’s, like, ‘Are you sure?’ I’m, like, ‘F*** yes. Go crazy. Just go f***ing crazy.’”
That affirmation and freedom, Grohl says, made a world of difference for Rubin. “And you could see – he’s f***ing started spreading his wings. And now it’s, like – he’s such a phenomenal drummer. His capabilities are off the f***ing charts.”
