QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE
70 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com October, 2017
“It’s the other one! The good knee!” he
smiles, without going into exact details
about how this happened. “Apparently I’m
not too easygoing on myself. That’s what
theytellme.IwasinformedthatItore
my meniscus. But you know what? I’m not
cancelling.I’mnotgoinganywhere.
“I have to take something strong enough
for the pain but I want to be able to get up
onstageandsing.Ihavetofindthebal-
ance between it all. A little pain is guar-
anteed. But that’s fine.”
Homme tends to hold forth like a cross
betweenamotivationalspeaker,arock&
roll evangelist and a sports coach at half-
timewhenhisteamisdownafewpoints
butstillinthegame.Perhapscomingback
from the dead – not to mention dealing
with terrorists trying to kill your fans and
friends – will do that to a guy.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. In-
stead, let’s go back to the very beginning.
Conveniently, Homme sets out his origin
story in miniature in the opening line of
Villains, the new Queens of the Stone Age
album: “I was born in the desert, May 17
in ’73, when the needle hit the groove I
commence to moving, I was chasing what’s
calling me.” It turns out his inspiration for
the line came from his wife, Brody Dalle
of the Distillers.
“Brody always had this line, ‘I’m Brody.
I’m from Fitzroy in Melbourne and I’ve
been around the world.’ I saw that as an
extension of Howlin’ Wolf and Robert
Johnson. Or ‘I was born my papa’s son,
when I hit the ground I was on the run’
[from ZZ Top’s “Just Got Paid”]. I see that
as a declaration of no dependence. I like
that. I also felt like this is a new world, this
is our seventh record and I might as well
re-introduce myself.”
He taps cigarette ash into an empty
wine glass on the coffee table where he’s
resting his boots. Across his knuckles are
the tattooed names of his grandparents,
Cap and Cam, along with the names of
his two sons (his daughter’s name is inked
across his heart). Family and home – he
grew up in Palm Desert, California – have
a strong pull on Homme.
In “Feet Don’t Fail Me”, that opening
song from Villains, he sings, “I’m much
older than I thought I’d be.”
“I never thought I would make it past
40,” he says. “I’m not being dramatic, I
just never had a v ision of myself in my 60s.
The men in my family don’t always make it
that long. I actually had cockier lyrics for
that song, but it felt fake, so I decided to be
honest. I’m already in what I call the gravy
section of my life.”
Recently Homme was fortunate to
spend quality time with a rock icon who is
even further along the gravy section of his
life. He co-wrote and produced Iggy Pop’s
Post Pop Depression, which the 70-year-
old veteran has claimed will be his last re-cord. Homme learned a lot from
Pop, from working on songs that
confronted his personal legacy,
to seeing him completely turn
around an apathetic audience
in Miami, to working with him
the day after his old friend David
Bowie died.
“He was meant to be coming
out to California from Florida to
rehearse when I heard the news
about Bowie,” says Homme. “I
called his wife Nina at midnight
because he was meant to be up
at five o’clock to get to the air-
port. And I said, ‘I understand if
he’s gotta do whatever he’s gotta
do.’ She said she’d wake him up
and ask him. She came back to
the phone five minutes later and
said, ‘He’s still coming.’
“We had the best fucking re-
hearsal. I’ll never forget it. I felt really
proud to be there for him in that moment.
I said, “Jim, are you all right?” It was the
first time I called him Jim, because he’s
Iggy and he’s earned it. He was like, “Oh,
I’m fine. Let’s play.” We had a conversation,
but it’s like he played his way through. I
mean, could you ask for anything else at
that moment?”
The last Queens of the Stone Age album
was called ...Like Clockwork because it
didn’t go like clockwork at all. Firstly it
was delayed when Homme recorded and
toured with Them Crooked Cultures, his
supergroup with Dave Grohl and John
Paul Jones. Then he spent four months
recovering from the knee surgery inci-
dent, a time during which he was deeply
depressed and considered giving up music
altogether. By the time recording began,
the mood in the band was strained and
drummer Joey Castillo ended up leaving.
“On Clockwork I think we were joking
around while we knew we were on the riv-
erboat to hell,” says Homme. “I was start-
ing from negative integers. I was starting
at less than zero. For Villains, I was start-
ing at maybe seven or eight, personally
speaking. Those are good numbers.
“I do think there’s a certain amount of
difficulty associated with making our re-
cords at this point. I just think that they
must go further than all the previous ones,
an ever-tightening alleyway. They’re built
upon the stack of what’s before, so you’re
kind of ...”
Teetering and juggling?
“Yeah. Teetering and juggling a knife,
chainsaw and a bowling ball. Previously
I felt like we were creating what was not
there and that was part of our thing. We
sounded, we looked, we behaved, we were
unlike everything around us. But now I
feel like we’re mining something out of
ourselves.”J
oshhommeemergesfrombehindablackcur-
tain into a backstage room at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion
as if he’s materialising out of thin air and trying to make
an entrance. He doesn’t have to try. At six feet four inches,
withslickedbackhair,aflashofagrinthatrevealsasilver
incisorandaprofilethatbearsapassingresemblance to
ElvisPresley,the44-year-oldleaderofQueensoftheStone
Agetendstotakeupthespaceinanyroomheenters.Andonthisoccasion,
justacoupleofhoursbeforehe’sdueonstage,Hommeenterswithabadlimp
andtheaidofawalkingstick.He’sfuckeduphisknee.No,nottheknee he
fuckedupin2010,whichresultedinabotchedoperationwherehisheart
stopped and he was technically dead before being revived with a defibrillator.
Senior writer Barry Divola wrote
about the Preatures in RS 790.
“I never thought
I would make it
past 40. The men
in my family
don’t always
make it that
long.”