Josh Homme, The Shepherd Of The Weird

Photos by Lincoln Jubb

When California’s Queens of the Stone Age announced they were playing Darwin as one of only three Splendour sideshows, the general consensus was delighted confusion.

Further adding to the surprise was news that local Indigenous band, Lonely Boys, from remote Arnhem Land, would open for them. Speaking to QOTSA frontman, Josh Homme, three days after the incredible show, he explains why he decided to drop a pin in such an unexpected place. “Originally, I was coming with my family, so I wanted to take them to Darwin, go to the Northern Territory and just go outback style, cause I thought, ‘God, I bet you it’s like my hometown,’” Homme says. The hometown he’s referring to is Palm Desert, a city in California’s Coachella Valley which boasted a population of 11,000 residents in 1980, when Homme was seven-years-old. It turns out Darwin lived up to his expectations. “What works there does not work anywhere else, and what works everywhere else does not work there. And I think I feel a really strong kinship with that notion—of being like, ‘We’re on the outside, come on and join us!’”

For Homme, the remoteness of his childhood in Palm Desert has always been a source of both pride and shame. He’s often spoken about making his own fun as a kid in a town devoid of a thriving social scene. “I think that brand of fun out there is a little goofy, in a really good way. I’ve always had a certain amount of pride—and shame—about the desert, cause you know, I take people out there and you’re at the Walmart at 2.30 in the morning and you see some people there…” But it’s not just his hometown that harbours the freaks. They’re everywhere, and Homme is their shepherd. Having travelled with the band for over two decades now, there’re few places left in the world he hasn’t visited, and few weirdos that he hasn’t met—and he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I think I see that potential tweaker vibe all over the world and I think I’m more proud of it than anything, I think I appreciate it. Some people like fine wine, I like fucked up people. A friend of mine, who is also very perverse himself once said, ‘You’re the shepherd of the weird’, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll fucking take that!’”

At 44-years-old, you might make the mistake of assuming Homme has it all figured out. Married in 2007, he and his wife, Brody Dalle of the Distillers, have three children. But Homme assures it is a mistake, and one that he now realises he used to make about his own parents. “You just realise that adults are just people older than you. Like, your parents fucked before mine! There you go; that’s the difference,” he says. Homme mentions his parents often when he speaks—and warmly when he reminisces on his yearly family road trips to Idaho during his childhood. It was in Idaho, when he was eight, that he first realised the power of music. “When I was eight, I went to this festival in Sandpoint Idaho, and I saw Carl Perkins play. And I knew who Elvis was, but I didn’t realise that Carl Perkins had written ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, and so I realised songs had this transient nature and they were like a friend you could hang around with, but there was no guarantee they were gonna be around forever,” he says.

It was that same summer that Homme’s parents introduced him to a cassette of Jackson Browne’s ode to the open road, Running on Empty. “It was the time of cassettes then, and you’d just let them flip and they’d come back around again. I don’t think they focused so much on the fact that one of the songs is called ‘Cocaine’, and I don’t know why they just overlooked this thing as it flipped from side A to side B over and over again. The cover was a road that goes to nowhere and much of the songs are recorded on the road, in the back of buses, in hotel rooms and live, and so they’re a mishmash of the road. Seeing this traveling musician called Carl Perkins, knowing he was behind ‘Blue Suede Shoes’, and then traveling with these songs about the road, now I think to my parents when they say, ‘Why are you doing this?!’, I think, ‘Oh you fucking wonder why I ended up doing this!?’”

While these pangs of nostalgia seem to soften Homme a bit, it’s not long before the train down memory lane severely derails. After he spends a few minutes re-enacting a stand-up routine from American comedian George Carlin, Homme addresses the hypocrisy of religion before explaining his own beliefs. “I’m a realist. I’ve always had a disdain for humanity. I don’t like how it’s set up. I didn’t set it up. They’ve cut down trees so they can make paper, just so they can write a list of don’ts. Don’t do that, don’t do this, can’t do this, won’t do that, you shouldn’t do that, don’t do that, or it’ll change your life. If you do any of the don’ts, your life is irrevocably changed—put him away. Right?” he asks, before jumping straight back into the ring. “I don’t believe in all that shit.” What does he believe in, then? “I believe in ideals, that’s why I play music, right? That’s why I’m not a pessimist, I have these optimistic view points like faith, justice, patience, acceptance, forgiveness, you know? Fairness, and truth! Truth isn’t a fucking dead end.”

By this point, it’s obvious there are no dead ends when it comes to talking to a man like Josh Homme. Intelligent as he is assertive, and unapologetically ready to speak his mind at all times. Throw him an issue, and he’ll hit that fucking thing out of the park. No better a time to ask his thoughts on social media than off the back of an anarchist war cry, right? “I don’t do modern shit. I’m anti social media, I don’t do any of that stuff because I’m not curating a best of so someone will fucking dig it and frankly, it’s called a following because you follow me, I don’t follow you. Also I would fuck it up, and I’m too busy living, and I just don’t fucking care, you know?”

Next month, QOTSA will release their seventh studio album, Villains, produced by Mark Ronson. Homme hopes that at least 15% of the population hates it. “I’ve always felt that, and I told this to Ronson, I said, ‘Unless 15% of the people truly hate you, you suck,” and he goes, ‘I’m just trying to get it down to 45!’” he laughs. As for the decision to record another album, Homme says that after a rough few years, it just felt like the right thing to do. “I think when you get to a 7th record, there’s a fair question that anyone can ask which is, ‘Why do we need a 7th record out of you?’ But the truth is that the tough things that happened in the last 4 or 5 years—they’ve already told me why. Because now is all you ever get—someone’s gonna punch your ticket at any moment, so you might as well go for it,” he says. “And I know the answer to one of life’s big questions; why are we here? Because we’re here. You better get going now. And when you find out that’s only the temporary answer, cause you find out the real answer, you better have done enough to make it worth it. Because if you get the gift of life, you better fucking roll those dice over and over and go for it, or what’s the fucking point?

The point, dear friends, should now be drilled into your skulls. The point is to enjoy the here, the now, the splendour in the grass. Which, speaking of, you must stay on.

“You know, stay off the grass?” Homme asks, alluding to the authoritarian tone of, well, everything. “Why? In fact, staying on the grass just because you want me off the grass is a plenty good enough reason for me to stay, other than it feels fucking tremendous and looks great. And they say it’s always greener and it’s like; find out. I’m not here to wait, it’s too short.”

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