Weezer drummer, Pat Wilson took time out from his day job this weekend to play guitar with Foo Fighters during their performance at the Fuji Rock festival in Japan.
Joining the band on Saturday, Wilson took the place of Foo Fighters’ regular Pat (Smear) to play guitar on Big Me from Foo Fighters’ self-titled 1995 debut album.
Dave Grohl introduced Pat by saying, “Please welcome, the newest member of the Foo Fighters…he used to be in Weezer, now he’s in the Foo Fighters!”
Of course, this led the audience to think he was about to aim the spotlight at Josh Freese, who contributed drums to Weezer’s 2009 album, Raditude as well as taking up the drum stool during Pat Wilson’s switch to guitar between 2009-2012.
At that, Wilson took to the stage, complete with Smear’s three-pickup Gibson SG Custom. After solidly running through the Beatles-inspired tune, the drummer displayed some unexpected lead chops by playing some tapped licks over the song’s ending.
Wilson wasn’t the only guest to show up on stage with Foo Fighters on Saturday. Earlier in their set, the band were joined by Alanis Morissette for a version of Sinéad O’Connor’s Mandinka, paying tribute to the Irish singer, who passed away on July 26 aged 56.
“We’re singing this song for a reason tonight.” says Dave Grohl, Alanis Morissette adding “For a beautiful woman with high intelligence and deep empathy, way ahead of her time, who is no longer with us.”
Josh Freese later took to social media, posting a photo of the drumming trio to explain how the Foos/Wilson collaboration came about.
“Dave and I share a great love for Pat Wilson. We played Fuji Fest tonight and Weezer is playing tomorrow so we kidnapped him and took him a day early from Tokyo out here. Even got him up on stage to play guitar on a song. A fine time was had by all.”
Meanwhile, Foo Fighters recently uploaded pro-shot footage of Josh Freese’s debut with the band with the live version of Under You added to the band’s YouTube channel. The video is taken from the Foo Fighters: Preparing Music for Concerts performance, first broadcast via a livestream back in May.
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