Former Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese revealed the reason behind leaving the band and Trent Reznor’s possible reaction if he had joined Linkin Park during his recent interview with Dean Delray.

As you probably know, Josh Freese joined many legendary bands such as Guns N’ Roses, A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, and Paramore as their drummer for their records and tours. The drummer started to tour with Nine Inch Nails in 2005 for their With Teeth Tour.

Then, Freese continued to work with the band and played the drums for Nine Ich Nails’ fifth studio album entitled ‘Year Zero’ which was released on April 17, 2007. He also toured with them but he decided to leave the band in 2008 after his girlfriend got pregnant with their third kid.

The drummer explained the situation saying that he was the only father in the band back then and he couldn’t spend any time with their kids due to the busy work schedule. When he told his decision to Trent Reznor, he understood his reason but Freese was sure that Reznor would have killed him if he had joined another band like Linkin Park shortly after leaving Nine Inch Nails.

Freese stated in his interview that:

“We’ve been touring a lot, and at the time, I was the only one in the band with kids, I was the only one that was a father, and the ironic part is, I left, and then Trent got married and now he has five kids. When he was getting up to four – when he had three, I was like, ‘Dude, one more, join the Four Club, come on!’ And now he has five kids.”

Anyways, with Trent, yeah, I left on good terms because I was like, ‘Listen, man, I don’t have anything else lined up, I’m not leaving because this band over here offered me more money. I need to just go home and be a dad for a while, I need to be home for my family.‘

He was like, ‘Yeah, man, that’s a totally noble, understandable reason.’ The fact that I wasn’t going to go join Linkin Park for a raise, he’d probably want to kill me. I’d want to kill me, but – you know what I mean, I want to go home and just be a dad, and he was like, ‘I get it, man.'”

You can listen to the interview below.