The album that changed Josh Homme’s musical perspective
As the 2000s were dawning, Queens of the Stone Age helped kick rock in the ass again. Out of the ashes of Kyuss, Josh Homme created one of the ultimate stoner rock outfits that took listeners on a journey through the most decrepit sounds in modern rock, from the warped swagger of ‘No One Knows’ to the head-trip of ‘Better Living Through Chemistry’. Though Homme always fell into the standard rock category, he started in a very different place than where he ended up.
Long before making his QOTSA anthems, Homme was indebted to the original punk explosion, immersing himself in the world of hardcore punks like Black Flag. While he had initially started playing when he was in his teens with the most vulgar punk rock imaginable, he started to turn around once a little band from Seattle started rearing its head.
As the 1990s were dawning, Nirvana’s Nevermind turned the rock world on its head, bringing alternative rock to the masses and turning Kurt Cobain into the next voice of a generation. While most fans hopped on the bandwagon off the strength of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, Homme admittedly got into the band a few years later.
When talking about his experience with Nirvana, Homme remembers his first record being their debut, Bleach. While the grunge titans’ first record at Sub Pop lacked the power of Dave Grohl behind the drumkit, Cobain’s knack for writing songs was already solidified, creating incredible works of art on tracks like ‘About a Girl’ and ‘School’.
Despite being a punk, Homme’s life was changed when he heard Bleach for the first time, recalling during an interview with Rolling Stone: “The first time I heard Bleach, I remember turning to my friends and saying, ‘We gotta start writing better songs.’ It was a total perspective-changer – it definitely ripped a sheet of paper off of my mental notepad.”
Even though Homme still held his punk rock stalwarts fairly close to the chest, he admitted that Nevermind helped him realise what other music was out there, explaining, “I was raised on Black Flag and the Cramps; I had always thought, ‘This is the best shit ever, and no one’s going to listen to it.’ Nevermind proved that I was completely wrong about that. I was so stoked.”
As Homme started making waves in the California desert rock scene, members of Nirvana were paying attention right back. When interviewed about what they were listening to back in 1992, Grohl said that he thought the future of music was Kyuss, who had just released their sophomore album, Blues for the Red Sun.
Much like Nirvana, though, Homme didn’t want to continue down a path that would lead to Kyuss becoming stale, folding the project after only four albums before unveiling his new visions with Queens of the Stone Age. Homme would also jam with Dave Grohl later, taking him out on the road for the album Songs for the Deaf during breaks from Foo Fighters and in the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures. Josh Homme will always be indebted to classic punk and metal, but it took Cobain’s words to help him find his voice.
