How to play guitar like Josh Homme
Trying to figure out the sound of Josh Homme is a fool’s errand. The Queens of the Stone Age leader has become one of the most distinctive guitar technicians in modern rock, with his technique and sonic signature becoming well-known around the world. But Homme is also happy to clam up when it comes to disclosing how he gets his sound, leading curious onlookers on a wild goose chase that often includes dead-ends, contradictory information, and straight-up blatant lies.
“I don’t do that only because my sound is important to me, and I’ve spent a lot of years just working it over with little tricks here, and there, I almost feel like if you reveal too much of that, you give away something that’s near and dear to you,” Homme told Jon Matsumoto in 2007. “It’s like you put it up on the altar and say, ‘Here, everyone take a slice.'”
Still, thanks to stage photos, behind-the-scenes whispers, a dedicated gear archivist, and Homme’s more relaxed stance on his own sound, the picture is starting to become more clear. For one, you’ll hardly see any major name brands or common companies in Homme’s arsenal of guitars, amps, and speakers. From wonky foreign models to forgotten gear brands, Homme has made a great career in taking unwanted equipment and getting the most out of it.
“The $300 Epiphone that I have, it’s one of my most faithful and greatest soldiers,” Homme told MusicRadar in 2010. “It’s the best hammer I have in my tool bag because that’s what I do: I hammer. I’m self-trained, and I play because that’s my religion: music”.
“I have a Gibson ES-225, which I really like. Of course, it’s the noncollectable model in the Gibson series because there’s a dog-eared P-90 in the centre position, but that’s a great position because it has the milkiness of the neck sound and enough cut from the treble position,” he adds. “It also works great acoustically, so you can mic it as an acoustic and add this extra pluck to the tonality”.
“They’re glass case material! We don’t have any display items,” Homme explains. “I have a ’65 Teisco that will rip your ears off. We have a philosophy which is about using the worst stuff incorrectly; it just disproves ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’, because you can absolutely do that. That Teisco, for example – is that the best guitar ever made? It’s terrible, but there’s something to that; it’s got a certain thing”.
“That goes for amps too,” Homme continues. “I’m doing what I’ve already heard a number of times from guitar people is blasphemy. I have a 1938 Gibson EH-185 [amp] on the road. There are probably no more than 400 of them, and this is the most mint condition one I’ve ever seen. And it’s out here! The other night I tripped and spilt vodka on it. It shouldn’t drive, but that’s not the point. These things aren’t meant to be wiped with a diaper”.
The origins of Homme’s guitar style come from an unlikely genre: polka music. In one of the highest interviews currently available on the internet, Homme and Zwan guitarist Matt Sweeney sat down in a room with no air conditioning and talked about Homme’s unique approach to the instrument. As it turned out, a lack of appropriate exposure to rock and roll forced Homme to learn the guitar through the lens of the lesser-loved genre.
“He was the guy who taught guitar in the desert,” Homme remembered about his first guitar teacher. “It’s a bit moronic, but some of the most obvious stuff was not obvious to me. Like that there would be picks, I was like, ‘What do you mean? What’s that?’ On year three of playing guitar, I was like, ‘What is it?’. The first thing I bought was a thumb pick.”
Homme reveals that his polka practice taught him to always play full bar chords, leading to strange major chord progressions that later appeared in his work with Queens of the Stone Age. While he doesn’t get into the specific scales, Homme also acknowledges his penchant for Lydian solos and other atypical modes helped give his guitar playing a unique colour that other players who learned rock or blues first didn’t get.
“There’s all this curtsying and shit,” was how Homme described his approach. The chromatic turns and strange jumps that Homme learned in his youth are all over tracks like ‘No One Knows’, ‘Go With the Flow’, and ‘Mind Eraser, No Chaser’. While Homme’s collection of effects includes wah-wah pedals and more modern stompboxes, his penchant for old amps and roughed-up castoffs has helped define his sound. As he revealed to Mark Ronson in the Apple TV+ series Watch the Sound, a tiny practice amp has been the secret to some of his most iconic tones.
“This is the secret weapon,” Homme said about a 1980 Peavy Decade amp that was in his possession. “This thing is incredible. This is the best bass amp [and] guitar amp. It just sounds so wirey.” To get the full Josh Homme sound, guitars from brands like Maton, Ovation, and Motor Ave are your best choices. If you’re looking for something a little easier to find, Epiphone and Gretsch are some of Homme’s other favourite axe manufacturers.
Perhaps the greatest part of recreating Josh Homme’s signature sound is that anyone can do it. While the exact gear that Homme uses has likely been priced up thanks to Homme’s association with them, the ethos hasn’t changed: cheap, second-hand, busted, broken, and undesirable are all keywords to keep at the forefront of your mind. With a ratty practice amp and a knockoff guitar, you can create the same torrent of noise that Josh Homme conjures up in his biggest songs.
