Queens of the Stone Age
Queens of the Stone Age like playing it loose. By my count, there have been well over a couple dozen musicians who have contributed to the band's sound over the years including Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, and former Nirvana drummer and head Foo Fighter, Dave Grohl. Even funnyman Will Ferrell got in on the action when Queens of the Stone Age were the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in May 2005. Ferrell revived his fictional Blue Oyster Cult cowbellist, Gene Frenkle, and jammed with Queens on their first song of the night.
The one constant in Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA) remains its founder, lead singer and guitarist, Josh Homme. Although he respects the stability of a band like U2, whose lineup has remained intact since their inception in 1976, Homme relishes the opportunity to mix it up with other artists and experiment with the band’s sound, record by record. He consistently makes great music with the Queens ever-changing lineup due to his knack for collaboration. Homme welcomes input from other musicians and doesn’t feel a need to take sole credit for everything the band puts out. For Homme, it’s all about the love of making music.
Josh Homme began playing the guitar at age 9 and is a multi-instrumentalist who, in addition to his guitar duties, has also handled bass, drums and keyboard for QOTSA. Homme and a schoolmate formed the heavy metal band Sons of Kyuss (later shortened to Kyuss) in the late1980s when Homme was just 14 years old. By the early ‘90s, Kyuss had developed a cult following largely through local impromptu shows called “generator parties” where he and his bandmates would drive into the scorched California desert and, using gasoline-powered generators for electricity, put on a heavy metal show out in the middle of nowhere for anyone who turned up. After Kyuss disbanded in 1995, Homme had a brief stint with grunge act Screaming Trees before forming Gamma Ray in 1996, which would become Queens of the Stone Age a year later.
The band put out a couple early EPs before releasing their self-titled debut album in 1998, Queens of the Stone Age. They followed up with Rated R (2000), Songs for the Deaf (2002), Lullabies to Paralyze (2005), and Era Vulgaris (2007) and have continued to evolve their sound with each successive album, experimenting with a wider variety of instruments, including horns and string sections, dance oriented elements, darker tones, and a host of recording guests. Their music has been described as hard rock, alternative rock, art rock, heavy metal, stoner rock, and as “robot rock” by Homme, referring to the band’s repetitive riffs that, as he puts it, “just pound into your head.”
In 1997, Homme founded The Desert Sessions, an ongoing musical collaborative. These periodic retreats are held at the Rancho De La Luna recording studio in Joshua Tree, California, and are meant to foster artistic spontaneity. Recording is done on the spot, in a matter of hours and with a constantly changing lineup. The Sessions are casual and completely unstructured and are meant to remind musicians why they got involved in music in the first place. According to Hommes, “At Desert Sessions you play for the sake of music. It’s easy to forget that this all starts from playing in your garage and loving it.” To date, 10 volumes of The Desert Sessions have been recorded.
Homme is curiously evasive when it comes to his guitars. He has gone so far as to lie in interviews concerning his equipment to throw people off track who might otherwise be inclined to try and imitate his sound. Although he claims to own close to 35, he says that only 3 of his guitars are any good. He purposely doesn’t own a Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul, preferring to search for guitars that intrigue him instead, those that are old and scarred and have a story to tell over what are generally considered “quality” guitars.
Queens of the Stone Age have retained the same lineup for two years running now. When the band wrapped their 2007 tour at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in the UK, Homme announced in an interview with the BBC that QOTSA would be returning to the studio to begin work on their next album, which he had hoped to have ready for an early 2009 release, as well as another Desert Sessions record and a re-mastering of the group’s debut album. With that target date having passed, and with band members currently involved in various side projects, the band have tentative plans to reconvene in summer 2010.
Next up, Josh Homme lands a dream collaborative with Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and reunites with Dave Grohl to form the supergroup, Them Crooked Vultures.
