Early Inspiration: The country musicians who made Josh Homme want to be a performer
Queens of the Stone Age are undoubtedly among the last great classic rock bands. Fronted by the dynamic force that is Josh Homme, the band draws on a vast history of rock ‘n’ roll eminence to bring a consummate product to its legion of devoted fans. Homme will have his audiences lighting up a joint for a head-bobbing stoner rock anthem one moment and moshing to ‘No One Knows’.
Queens of the Stone Age are loosely branded as a desert rock band. Homme popularised the tag with his formative band, Kyuss, in the late 1980s and ’90s. Essentially, the style brings a more eclectic and psychedelic approach to the grunge sound, as championed by Nirvana. Homme’s appreciation for the grunge scene drew him to Seattle, where he formed Queens of the Stone Age in 1996.
After emerging from the Palm Desert music scene, Homme continued to explore a loose approach to classic rock styles. Queens of the Stone Age celebrate influences in the blues, Krautrock, electronica, grunge, heavy metal and hardcore punk. Crucial to the band’s vision were bands like Nirvana, Black Flag, Screaming Trees, Motörhead and AC/DC.
As a teenager, Homme became obsessed with hard rock bands of the 1970s, many of which remain an essential part of his listening regimen. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2017, Homme revealed that he habitually listens to music by AC/DC and Motörhead before stepping on stage. “I’m an AC/DC man because I like it primitive,” he said. “There’s that beauty in Bon [Scott] guiding your way through an evening. I’m also an avid disciple of Lemmy and Motörhead. But I don’t look at it in this sport, get-pumped-up way.”
Like most hard rock and metal fanatics, Homme started off on the softer stuff. Like an addiction or a taste for spicy food, heavy music seems to open itself up to the young listener in stages similar to its evolution. The gradient that runs from The Who through Motörhead towards stuff like Pantera and Cannibal Corpse is similar to that of hard rock accessibility.
If we extrapolate down from this imagined trajectory of rock hardness far back past Led Zeppelin and The Who, we will wind up in the totally innocuous realms of country and folk music. As a man of many flavours, Homme is a fan of it all, and alongside his unexpected fascination with the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, he is a long-lived country fanatic.
One of Homme’s first musical fascinations in his childhood was Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ classic duet of ‘Islands in the Stream’. “When I was young, I listened to Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton songs,” he recalled. The duo introduced the youngster to the romance of music and made him want to play music. The only problem was that Homme didn’t feel particularly well-suited to country singing.
“I knew when I heard Charged GBH or Black Flag that hardcore punk was something I could play too — it made it possible for me,” he continued. Over time, Homme became increasingly interested in hard rock but never forgot his country inclinations, especially when writing. “Hearing the storytelling of Johnny Cash, that’s almost a book on tape with music behind it. Later, I graduated into Waylon [Jennings] and Willie [Nelson], but it started with Kenny Rogers”.
