Ilan Rubin recalls Tom DeLonge’s alien photo stunt at his wedding reception

Ilan Rubin revisited one of the strangest pieces of modern rock lore on Go With Elmo Lovano, where he described Tom DeLonge showing Trent Reznor a photo he claimed was of a dead alien at Rubin’s wedding reception. For a drummer who has moved through Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters and Angels & Airwaves, it was the kind of backstage collision that only rock lifers could somehow make feel real.

The episode, posted April 4, 2026, caught Rubin in the middle of a career stretch that has put him on a very small list of drummers trusted at the top of the game. His wedding took place in 2020, while he was still in Nine Inch Nails, and that mattered because both DeLonge and Reznor were there. Rubin has also been in Angels & Airwaves since 2011, which gave DeLonge a long personal and professional tie to the groom before the alien photo ever came out.

DeLonge’s stunt fit the public persona he has spent years building around UFO and UAP culture. He co-founded To The Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2017, and his career has long mixed pop-punk fame with alien obsession, so the bizarre wedding-reception moment landed less like random chaos and more like a very Tom DeLonge gesture. Rubin framed him as the kind of person who is so unmistakably himself that even a story this outlandish still felt natural in the room.

Rubin used the same interview to address the drummer move that sent him from Nine Inch Nails to Foo Fighters and brought Josh Freese back to Nine Inch Nails after Freese’s earlier exit from Foo Fighters in 2025. Rubin said it was not really a dramatic “swap,” but a practical career change. That detail matters in a scene that often turns every chair change into a trade rumor, because Rubin’s rise has become one of the most closely watched drummer stories in rock.

Foo Fighters’ official tour calendar lists Rubin in the band’s 2026 lineup, while Nine Inch Nails has remained active in 2026 with new music and news. The alien photo may be the headline-grabber, but the deeper story is Rubin’s position inside two of rock’s most visible modern bands, right where the scene’s mythology still gets made.