How the desert shaped QOTSA’s music: “More accidentally than anything else”
Queens of the Stone Age emerged from the blizzarding sands of the desert back in the mid-1990s, ready to make something new. They’ve stayed there ever since.
That might seem a reductive way of putting it, not least a factually inaccurate one, since the band have become one of the biggest rock and roll staples to bridge the gap between the sounds of the new millennium. But nevertheless, no matter what far-flung corner of the world they may find themselves in, they intrinsically know it’s all because of the desert.
Indeed, it’s pretty rare to see a band still so deeply rooted in the place where they first made their name, not least one which isn’t specifically tied to any particular landmark or mantra. Yet something about the desert – its barren landscape, its searing heat – has never quite loosened its grip on the band, and they’ve never wanted to let it go.
“The best way to put it is you’re not in a hurry in the desert. You get the chance to make a completed thought. Which is why I think, more accidentally than anything else, Queens’ records are kind of the amalgam of an idea in total,” frontman Josh Homme mused in 2007. By that time, in the space of less than a decade, they’d already released five albums.
In this respect, the environment was certainly a flowing pot of inspiration, and was, in fact, perhaps the only desert where creative juices fell like torrential rain. Despite this, definite juxtapositions were clear – an album like 2002’s Songs for the Deaf was directly inspired by the desert, yet by the time the band reached 2007’s Era Vulgaris, the whole concept was about contrasting this to the exuberance and over-indulgence of Hollywood.
“It’s not really a delivered concept record, but they end up being a completed thought, or a certain examination of a certain thing,” Homme added at the time. Yet it was more than evident, in the contrast between the two landscapes, which one he saw as his more essential muse.
“The desert is more like getting a chance to really look at something without the hurried pressure lots of cities have,” he said.
“When you’re in the city, you’ve got to get it on or get swallowed. I don’t feel like that time pressure is the same in the desert,” Homme ultimately concluded, but in doing so he also exposed a prime tension which has possibly kept the band on the edge of destruction all this time. They tend to thrive where no one can see them. Obviously, when you’re an international rock band filling arenas, that becomes a little difficult.
There’s no denying that this has become even more complicated, in QOTSA’s case, by the myriad of tragedies and near-misses they have endured over the years – indeed, it wasn’t long after that period in the late 2000s when Homme considered quitting music altogether, following a major health scare, but returning to the desert, the tension finally lifted, and he knew what to do.
As such, you could say that the desert was not just the birthplace for QOTSA, but their essential lifeblood, which has sustained them through thick and thin. It’s a space which gives them oxygen – ironically, when there is often very little of it – and seems to rejuvenate them beyond belief. It’s sacred to them, and it’d better remain untouched.
