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STONE AGE ROCK

By Mike Bell

For well over a decade now, Josh Homme has been pumping out some of the highest quality hard rock to be heard anywhere. As the guitarist for desert–rock pioneers, Kyuss, he was a key element in shaping the seminal group’s sludgy yet spacey sounds. Once they’d flourished throughout the first half of the nineties, having released four successful records and toured the world several times over, the group disbanded, having becoming exhausted with each other after such a briefly potent run. Homme then relocated to Seattle where he joined the Screaming Trees as a touring guitarist and began to record his own new music under the name ‘Gamma Ray’, with such top shelf talent as Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron and Dinosaur Jr’s Mike Johnson.
By 1998, Gamma Ray had been renamed Queens of the Stone Age, their self titled debut full length had been released by Loose Groove Records and Homme’s ex–bandmate, Kyuss bassist Nick Oliveri, was now a member of the outfit. Homme and Oliveri would be the only two stable members of the band for the next two QOTSA records, 2000’s Rated R and 2002’s breakthrough Songs for the Deaf, as they worked with a revolving lineup of drummers, guitarists and multi–instrumentalists in the studio and on tour throughout this early era of the band.
While riding high on the runaway success of Songs for the Deaf — fueled by steady touring, heavy cable rotation of two videos and arguably the temporary membership of Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) on drums — Homme made the difficult decision to dismiss Oliveri from the group; his hard partying and misbehaving on the road had soured the chemistry to the point that Homme couldn’t have him around anymore. Many followers of the band were not pleased with the news of Oliveri’s sacking, giving Homme a bit more to prove to himself and the fans as he geared up for the next record, 2005’s Lullabies to Paralyze.
“With Lullabies to Paralyze, we felt like we were pretty much going to war,” says Homme over the phone, having just wrapped up a session for the upcoming Eagles of Death Metal record. “That was definitely a transitional record for us.” Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen (A Perfect Circle) and drummer Joey Castillo (Danzig) joined on during the touring cycle of Songs For the Deaf, and have stuck around as full time members ever since. Homme recruited Eleven’s Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider to round out the Lullabies era lineup and the conquest of a new age was on. This reporter had the pleasure of catching them with Nine Inch Nails at the ACC in Toronto during this period. On that particular night, there was an alcohol ban in effect at the venue, a very un–rock n’ roll issue Homme couldn’t help but address with much disdain. Having directed his comments at a nameless bureaucrat who was probably upstairs laughing at everybody, Homme was confronted by the ACC brass after his set. “He came and talked to me, yeah, he was interested in having a ‘sit down’ with me,” Homme recollects with a sly giggle. “I think I was kind of in a bad way on that tour anyway. I went around just looking for trouble a little bit, and that’s not smart, and it’s not sexy.”

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