“Could play anything”: Josh Homme on why he fell in love with New Hope’s greatest slackers
Josh Homme had been around the block a few times by the time Queens Of The Stone Age’s eighth studio album In Times New Roman… was released.
Much like his musical companion Dave Grohl, Homme had been kicking around the rock and roll scene since the late 1980s. At just 14 years old, Homme formed a punk rock-influenced heavy metal band that would eventually become the cult icons Kyuss, a band that would shape the desert rock subgenre that he would become the bastion of.
In the mid 1990s, when Kyuss fell apart, Homme’s second iconic band, Queens Of The Stone Age, were formed, and so began the second chapter of his celebrated career. Under the iconography of the Queen’s name, as well as his work with Eagles Of Death Metal and the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures, Homme has been something of a constant in the music industry and has provided the necessary glue between genres, bridging sounds from past and present to keep the rock and roll torch alive.
So come 2023, in the ramp up to Queens Of The Stone Age’s eighth album, there was little in the way of insecurity – the promo run was a tried and tested entity for him. In those interviews, Homme was able to answer each question with a sense of reflection afforded to an artist with such a glittering history, and so he regarded the key to longevity as the ability to evolve.
He explained, “I guess [it’s like] orbital movement, like, as the Earth rotates, the idea should be able to rotate and change without losing your sense of gravity to what you’re doing, so that was the notion of making a band that could modify and change.”
While Homme’s career has exposed him to some of the very best artists in history, most notably in Them Crooked Vultures, which saw him team up with Grohl to recruit Led Zeppelin legend John Paul Jones, it was a band of more cult status that made a lasting impact on him and one that he considered masters of artistic adaptation.
He continued, “Much like the band Ween could play anything it wanted to whenever it wanted to, all you have to do is believe – you know, Ween put out a country record, and it’s an amazing country record. They believe they can do it. So I think Queens has always been like, ‘How do we keep changing, constantly, and risk losing people, but retain a sense of self?’”
Concluding, “And I think before that had a lot to do with interchanging members, and now it has a lot to do with keeping those members and taking these grand leaps together.”
Four decades of musical activity and eight studio albums prove that Homme’s methodology, forged by the influence of Ween, was well-informed. While Homme hasn’t quite delved into the outright worlds of country yet, he has subtly adapted through the eras to ensure his contribution to music is a consistent and much-needed one.
