Whiskers
member
Joined: 12/06/07
Location: Here
Posts: 565
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So, here's my essay-long experience eating with Mr. Freese:
My girlfriend Kendra and I were in front of the Cheesecake Factory at about 11:45 when Josh showed up videotaping us, smiling, holding a bag with the drum head, album, drum sticks, and t-shirt. He asked where we were from after commenting on how “crazy” his situation is. We told him the Bay Area and he commented on how he loves it there and asked if we lived near Sacramento. We said no, and then we went inside.
We sat down, all of us smiling, and he told us he could pay for one of us; Kendra elected me. I told him about my birthday on Tuesday and how this whole situation was unknown to me until 9AM and he cracked up about it. Then he talked about how he’s surprised that his stuff is selling (again, and I think it was the last time) and commented that in a few hours he was flying to Belgium later that day to play a show with The Vandals. I commented on how I was moving to Washington, and he mistook me halfway through my story and thought I had said that my mom had died and was being buried in Washington.
He then commented on the album cover of “Since 1972,” and how it was taken four years ago. The kid on his right shoulder is his 8 year-old son (4 at the time the picture was taken) and the other two kids are his son’s friends. Josh would chase the kids around the house wearing a mask, and Nicole suggested that she take a picture of it. Josh said that they didn’t know it would ever end-up as an album cover, and he said it was “creepy in a G-rated way.”
We told him that we’d met him before and he said he didn’t remember, but then told me that he remembered me when I commented that I’d previously asked him about drumming on Brian Welch’s album (which apparently only two people have asked him about). When I told him that on the album liner notes they misspelled his last name as “Freeze,” he said, “Those bastards.”
Then I told Josh about how the band that my friend Chris and I are in (spiralparadox) almost played a show with one of Alessandro Cortini’s bands (blindoldfreak). Josh thought it was great and asked me if Alessandro’s manager wasn’t just Alessandro, and I said that his manager “didn’t have that weird Italian accent.”
I asked him a couple “Holy-Crap-It’s-Josh-Freese” questions, the first of which was why had The Perfect Drug never been played live. He told us that in 2006 they had rehearsed it, but the end never came-out sounding right: they tried a slow version, a fast version, etc. but none of them worked, and it got to the point where Trent went, “Fuck it, I’m never playing this song!”
Another question I asked was the future of A Perfect Circle… well, I’d meant to ask him that, but he started talking about it on his own. Apparently Maynard had just talked to him a few days prior and Josh had wanted to say, “You know, we should tour again,” but he knew that, by saying that, Maynard would be hesitant. He said that A Perfect Circle reunion is likely at the end of this year or 2010. He then told me that A Perfect Circle was the first band to play at Coachella ever, and then mentioned that he has an offer to join “a popular alternative band” but couldn’t tell me what band it was.
I asked him about how to get into Club 33 and he said that his dad has been working at Disney Land for years, and one of Josh’s friends is a lawyer. Josh’s lawyer friend asked Josh to see if he (lawyer) could get into Club 33, and, somehow, the waiting list for admission into the club was erased and the lawyer got in. That’s how Josh can do the whole “Club 33 thing” in regards to “Since 1972.”
The last question I asked at that time was what it was like working with James Iha. He said that the two had met previously when Smashing Pumpkins played with A Perfect Circle in 2000, just before Smashing Pumpkins broke-up. He said that James was miserable at the time because of Billy Corgan’s inflated ego, and that he and Jeordie would say that their favorite member of Smashing Pumpkins was “the Asian woman.” After James joined APC, Josh and Jeordie White (who, Josh said later, just wants to tour forever because he has no friends or family to come back to) had helped James out of his shell to the extent that one day the three of them and Melissa Auf der Maur (who toured with the Pumpkins in 2000) comically asked Josh and Jeordie, “What have you done to James?” Josh commented on the new super-group that James is in called Tinted Windows. When I mentioned that James had a great singing voice, Josh said that he didn’t know that James sang in Smashing Pumpkins, or that he had his own solo album.
We then ordered food; Kendra got the four-cheese pasta (the waitress asked if she wanted chicken with that, and Kendra said no), Josh ordered the small Caesar salad, as he was “pacing himself” because he was eating lunch with a man from Sweden afterwards (the waitress asked if he wanted chicken with that, and Josh said no), and I ordered the traditional burger (Josh asked if I wanted chicken on that, I said no).
We started talking and somehow it was mentioned that Robin Finck thinks that the whole “Since 1972” price scheme is hilarious and that Meathead edited the original “Rich Fownes Show” episode because it was too mean to Justin (I have yet to see the unedited one).
I then asked how he got involved with Nine Inch Nails and he proceeded to tell Kendra and I a long and funny story.
In 2005, after Trent had released With Teeth and wanted a touring band, Josh was suggested. At the same time, though, he had an offer to drum on the new Sting album. He said he chose the Sting opportunity because he had already been associated with almost everybody in Nine Inch Nails. Trent got a new band, but, against his decision, he was stuck with Jerome Dillon because nobody else would drum for him.
While drumming for Sting, Josh had a week off in California, and it was the same week that Jerome had the heart problems. Josh was asked to fill in for a couple of shows, and he agreed and did it, and then he returned to drum with Sting. In the meantime, Jerome left the band and they had hired an Australian drummer named Alex Carapetis who Josh commented on as not one of the better drummers. I told Josh about the performance where Alex was two measures behind everyone, and Josh said that he’d heard about that.
Josh felt bad because he had liked playing the shows with Nine Inch Nails and had only gotten a taste of it. However, he finished drumming with Sting (all of the songs he’s drummed on haven’t been released yet) and Nine Inch Nails wanted him back in. He gladly rejoined the band and he said that the 2006 amphitheatre tour was the best tour he’s ever been on.
I asked him what his favorite songs to play live were, and he said Eraser, even though they only played it with him in 2006. He said that songs that he liked playing that weren’t played after 2007 Even Deeper and No, You Don’t, and he liked playing Love Is Not Enough, which was only played a handful of times after 2006.
Sometime in between all that he pointed out that I “knew more about Nine Inch Nails than he did” by correcting him on how Burn and The Perfect Drug weren’t on any albums.
Kendra and I got cheesecake after our main courses and Josh filmed us for a little bit eating them, smiling the whole time.
It was around this time that his girlfriend/assistant Nicole showed-up with their two-year-old son Augustus (nicknamed Auggie). Josh left to go to the bathroom, and Nicole said how Josh didn’t think that any of the expensive versions were going to sell, and then I told her that people on the Nine Inch Nails forums were posting things like, “Yeah, I’m getting the 250 dollar one! Woo!”
Josh came back and I thought it was surreal to see Josh Freese, one of my favorite drummers, acting like a “normal” human being with his family. Yeah, he’d been acting pretty normal throughout the whole lunch, but being around his girlfriend and his son brought out a different side of Josh, and I found it brought Josh Freese down from that mythical level I’d held him at.
We settled the issue of the bill and said goodbye, and then Kendra and I waited outside for her mom to show up. After about a minute, Josh popped out of the Cheesecake Factory, looked around to see if the guy from Belgium was showing up, saw us, and gave us a wave and a thumbs up before going back into the restaurant.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2009 02:37PM by Whiskers.
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