‘Cannibalism’: Josh Homme recommends an overlooked masterpiece
Of all the bands that graduated from the alternative rock underground to the arena-slaying mainstream, one can say that Queens of the Stone Age are one of the weirdest. Main-man Josh Homme played this down. If you asked him, he simply wanted to make music that was, in his words, “heavy enough for the boys and sweet enough for the girls”. Their brand of widescreen stoner rock was always more complicated than that, and proudly so.
At its core, that heavy/sweet dichotomy was always there. Homme’s smoky, snake-charming falsetto wraps intoxicating hooks around thunderous riffs straight from the SoCal underworld Homme’s previous project, Kyuss were the kings of. Listen further, though, and more esoteric influences would surface.
Ennio Morricone’s widescreen atmospherics. The Screaming Trees’ curdling blues hooks. Hidden in the very soul of QOTSA’s music, though, is German Krautrock and, in particular, Cologne’s least Googleable bunch of avant-garde maniacs, Can. If all that comes to mind when Krautrock comes up is Kraftwerk standing stock still behind synthesisers while playing songs about motorways, one might wonder where the connection comes from.
The truth is that Krautrock was a genre that allowed for many different kinds of expression, Neu! were different to Tangerine Dream who were worlds apart from Amon Düül II. The only thing that could connect them if you squint was a tendency to combine a rigid, propulsive drumbeat, with a repeating guitar or synth hook, and then stretch that combo out over however long the song went. Sometimes going over ten minutes with the same riff. Sound familiar?
Homme himself acknowledged this connection in an interview with Spin Magazine. In detailing his favourite albums of all time, he talked about Cannibalism 1, the 1978 compilation record from Can. He said “I began writing this angular, robotic guitar stuff, and I started to wonder if anyone had ever done that before, which is how I discovered Can.
Their drummer was so straight and so groovy, and they’d play one note for six minutes, which I realised is actually hard to do. It used to be disheartening for me to discover that someone had already done something I was doing, but at this point in my life, I just wanted to do things I liked. So, hearing Can revitalised the search. It was like an endorsement.”
He’s not alone, either. The compilation was released as a primer for audiences out of Germany, especially in the UK. So, no less an authority that Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks wrote the liner notes for it. Shelley said, “I’ve only one criticism to make of this compilation – the amount of material left off. The only way to treat this album is as a mouthwatering hors d’oeuvre, although it does make a tasty meal by itself.”
Ever since, Can have popped up as a core influence on Queens whenever Homme’s been asked about the music that made him. Which makes perfect sense. No matter how huge the band have gotten, there’s always been a boundary pushing sense of musical daring informing everything they do. Something they have in common with one of the most esoteric and exciting bands of the whole 1970s.
