How Josh Freese of Foo Fighters almost joined Pearl jam

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With news of Josh Freese becoming Foo Fighters new drummer being announced this week, I wanted to go back almost thirty years to 1994 and talk about a story many people may not know. Josh Freese almost joined the Pearl Jam following the departure of fan favourite drummer Dave Abbruzzese. Today, let’s take a look at what happened.
Josh Freese would pick up drums at the age of 8 when his family was residing in Placentia california. Born to a musical family, his father conducted the disneyland and disney world, resulting in the family relocating from Florida to California. His mother meanwhile was a classically trained pianist. Freese started doing gigs at the age of 12 playing in a Disney cover band that did top 40 material.
Freese would amass an impressive resume of bands and artists he had played with including the VandalsA Perfect Circle, Guns N’ Roses, Devo, Paul Westerberg, Suicidal Tendencies, The Offspring. In addition to that, he has also done a variety of commercial work doing radio and tv commercials.
By the time he was 14 Freese was telling people he wanted to be a household name like drummer Buddy Rich. By age 15 he’d already go on his first world with soap opera actor turned musician Michael Damian, telling the LA Times
“We had a nice tour bus, nice hotel rooms, sold-out shows, really good money and tons of girls,” he said. “Then I came back--your first tour being everything you thought it would be, tenfold--then I joined the Vandals, which was way more fun and way more real. But the next thing you know I’m in a van pulling a U-Haul and saying, ‘What do you mean we’re all staying in one room at Motel 6?’
“I came off that tour with such a false sense of reality on every level. But I have to say: It hasn’t been that much fun since.”
Pearl Jam by the mid 90’s was one of the biggest bands in the world, but they had undergone so much turmoil - they stopped making videos for MTV, they were in a fight with ticketmaster and they were struggling to keep drummers. The group’s original drummer Dave Krusen who played on the band’s debut record Ten was kicked out of the group due to his substance abuse issues. His temporary replacement Matt Chamberlin appeared in a video with the band and did some tour dates, but he ultimately left and joined Saturday Night Live’s house band. Then came fan favourite Dave Abbruzzese who would play on the group’s 1993 album Versus and most of the tracks on their follow up 1994’s Vitalogy. But Abbruzzese seemed to clash with frontman Eddie Vedder and bassist Jeff Ament. Abbruzzese also disagreed with the band’s fight with ticketmaster. Bassist Jeff Ament would tell author Mark Yarm in the book everybody loves our town , “Dave was a different egg for sure. There were a lot of things personality-wise where I didn’t see eye to eye with him. He was more comfortable being a rockstar than the rest of us. Partying, girls, cars. I don’t know if anyone is in the same place…”
Dave fired back claiming he was the only member of the band who had the same girlfriend for 8 years and that he was driving a used car during his time in the group and the band was hypocritical for showing up on the cover of magazines and then complaining in the same interview how they didn’t want to be rockstars. The band announced on August 1, 1994 the band parted ways with the drummer with Abbruzzese later coming out and saying he was fired. The band now needed to find a new drummer.
One of those drummer’s who auditioned for the spot was Josh Freese. Freese by 1994 already established himself as a drummer for The Vandals, Mike Muir’s both bands and as a and played with former Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg’s touring band. And was scheduled to appear on Juliana Hatfield’s next record.
In 1994 The LA Times would publish an article in the fall with the headline Seeking Pearls, He Finds a Gem : Pop music: Drummer Josh Freese made a bid to join rock’s hottest-selling band. Though he didn’t get the gig, he’s excited about his new group, Slider.
In the article Freese would tell the Times that he was contacted by guitarist Stone Gossard about auditioning for Pearl Jamin the summer of 94.. It had turned out Abbruzzese was a fan of Freese’s orange county band Xtra Large that he played with i