Author: u0zp4y

Emerging from the ashes of stoner rock pioneers Kyuss in the late 1990s, Queens Of The Stone Age quickly became an ever-shifting collective of musicians revolving around singer and guitarist Josh Homme. In 2005, as the band released their fourth album Lullabies To Paralyze, Classic Rock sat down with Homme to talk about a band like no other.

Josh Homme, frontman and founder of Queens Of The Stone Age, facilitator of the Desert Sessions, occasional Eagle Of Death Metal, pal of Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, has a fairly good claim to the title World’s Coolest Guy. Of course, he’s so damn cool that the suggestion of bestowing such a title upon him would make him blow chunks over the table.

Off stage as well as on, the guy has charisma. He also has that quality of being able to discuss anything, from the merits of pickled onion crisps to great underrated albums like The Groundhogs’ Thank Christ For The Bomb, and always have you thinking: “Damn, I wish I had said that”.

Lullabies To Paralyze, the fourth Queens Of The Stone Age album, entered the US chart at No.5 and the UK chart at 4 and is already on the way to outstripping its million-selling predecessor Songs For The Deaf.

Reviews of the album in the mainstream press were almost universally positive, even ecstatic, while the rock and metal mags gave it a much frostier reception. There’s a sense that some fans and critics feel betrayed by the direction in which the band have gone, and also a sense that others, outside the narrow self-imposed stoner rock ghetto, are just discovering them. If anyone regards the accessibility of recent QOTSA albums as a ‘sell-out’ then Josh Homme isn’t concerned.

“I wanted to take people with me and make records that were like a mix tape that you would make for a friend,” he explains. “And this album is the first time I feel that we’ve really achieved that. It’s an amalgam of things learned on the first three records.”

It’s not only the music, it’s also Homme’s new status as a celebrity that riles them, as well as his much publicised sacking last year of Queens co-founder and bass player Nick Oliveri.

“We’re gonna have detractors. There’s gonna be some people, you know, there’s nothing that we could do that will take away from their maniacal readiness to attack with Nick gone,” he says resignedly. “We could have been like a fucking Slayer record and they’d be like: ‘Pshaw! Pretty lightweight, huh?’”

Queens have always been a band with a revolving-door policy for its members, and to some extent it is that fluidity and uncertainty that has lent vitality to the band.

“I feel like the more nebulous Queens Of The Stone Age is – from people who play on the album, to the cover art, to the name of the album, to the name of the band – the more freedom exists for us to change, should we feel the need,” Homme says.

As well as a core that includes Homme, A Perfect Circle guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, former Danzig drummer Joey Castillo, and bassist Alain Johannes (replacing Oliveri), guests on the Lullabies To Paralyze album included Polly Harvey, Garbage singer Shirley Manson and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons.

“We’ve got Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top in the room playing guitar and singing harmonies with Mark Lanegan. I mean, God, how often does that happen? I was, like, wearing diapers during the recording,” Homme enthuses.

Former Screaming Trees frontman Lanegan joined Queens just before Songs For The Deaf, and while he reportedly left after the recording of the new album, he has popped up at several shows on the band’s European and US shows.

But while the departure or non-departure of Lanegan is just par for the course, the sacking of Nick Oliveri last year came as a shock to everyone. The statement issued at the time read: ‘A number of incidents occurring over the last 18 months have led to the decision that Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri can no longermaintain a working partnership in the band.’

Oliveri hit back, claiming that the original intention of the band had been compromised. “The concept was simple,” Oliveri said on his website. “A rock band: selfless, mindless, ego-free, unprotected, about danger, sex and no-bull rock’n’roll. You know what happens when a pure and original rock band gets polluted, poisoned by hunger for power and by control issues? Things get really out of control.

“The strongest leaders are chosen by their followers, not self-appointed. The best frontmen are chosen by their fans. And whatever happened to loyalty?”

Then, only a few weeks after this, Oliveri and Homme were spotted together at a gig. Oliveri then started telling everyone who would listen that he really wanted back into Queens; he admitted that he had “fucked up” and was prepared to do anything to reclaim his old job.

“I told him last time I was hanging out with him: ‘If anything falls through and you need somebody, you know where your bass player is, dude – you know where the bass player for that band is. So pick up the phone,’” Oliveri told Billboard magazine. “It ain’t about a money gig thing for me. I know which band I play bass in.”

Rumours abounded that he had been sacked for his penchant for party chemicals (something denied by Homme), with Oliveri himself claiming that he had left because Josh had sacked Mark Lanegan without telling anyone.

“Mark wasn’t sacked,” Homme insists. “It just so happened that the recording of the new album coincided with the release of Mark’s solo record [Bubblegum] and he wanted to go off and promote that.”

Homme further claimed that it was the band themselves who had been behind a campaign of disinformation, spreading rumours about the departure of Lanegan. So if Lanegan wasn’t sacked, why would Oliveri leave if this wasn’t the case? If anyone was in on the ‘joke’ then surely it was he?

Even now, almost a year on, the reasons are unclear, and when pressed on the point Homme retreats behind vagueness and a professed – and no doubt very genuine – affection for the man. Like Sid Vicious, Oliveri’s role in Queens was more than just his ability to play a few bass lines. He was in many ways soul of the band. No matter how serious things got, the fact that there was a bald guy with a beard playing bass stark naked tended to stop things from getting too A-Level. Off stage he was fond of a small sherry after dinner, as it were. One look at him and you knew that he was a past master at lighting his own farts.

While nobody doubts that Oliveri could be a royal pain in the arse to have around 24/7, he remains a popular guy with fans, other bands and with all the members of QOTSA.

“Because Nick is the realest motherfucker in rock’n’roll,” Homme says. “I love him, man.”

But would you have him back in the band?

“I never say never. But I’m also the kind of guy that will always stand on his own two feet and get up when he’s knocked down. The only time I won’t get up is when I’m dead. So we all need to stand up, because that’s what I’m about. And Nick is that way too.”

All of which raises the question as to whether Queens Of The Stone Age are a band or Josh Homme plus some musicians. He thinks hard: “I think this is the most collaborative record that I’ve ever made – notwithstanding The Desert Sessions, which is only everybody. Songs For The Deaf I made more or less by myself, and that experience was not good for me because it was like being left alone. We worked with an outsider on Songs For The Deaf, and the first thing he said was: ‘I wanna study your vibe and then I canperfect it’. And I was like… fuck! So after he was fired it was all about trying to get back to where we were at originally.”

Nevertheless, that suggests that while you’re not exactly a control freak, you do like to call the shots and say who’s in and who’s out.

“I think people have a perception that I steer the ship like a Nazi general, and that that is the most important role. But it’s not. It’s a whole family of artists that includes Chris Goss, Ween, Alain Johannes. And my role includes a lot of the stuff that sucks. We have a saying in the band: You fire yourself, but I tell you.”

Perhaps there would be fewer detractors were it not for Homme’s illustrious rock’n’roll past. It’s said that although in their day The Velvet Underground sold only a few thousand albums, everyone who bought a copy was inspired to go out and form a band of their own. The same could be said of Kyuss.

Emerging from the desert outside Los Angeles and featuring vocalist John Garcia, guitarist Homme, bassist Oliveri and drummer Brant Bjork, Kyuss played a number of legendary ‘desert jams’ in and around their home town of Palm Desert, California.

“Sometimes they were so beautiful that you’ve never seen anything like it,” Homme recalls. “Sometimes someone on acid was firing a shotgun, or some Mexican gang members were throwing someone onto the bonfire.”

At one show, Oliveri was so taken by the mood that hesmashed up his bass at the end of the second song – and didn’thave a spare or another one that he could borrow. Doh!

Kyuss’s 1991 debut Wretch was poor, but follow-up Blues For The Red Sun (produced by Masters Of Reality frontman Chris Goss) is a classic slab of space rock, blues and classic metal. Lost in the maelstrom of grunge and the death throes of big-hair metal, neither Blues… nor its equally good major-label follow-up Welcome To Sky Valley registered much outside of a small but vociferous clique of fanatical fans.

They were a truly awe-inspiring live band, but the tensions within the band between Oliveri (who left and was replaced by ex-Obsessed bassist Scott Reeder) and then between Garcia and Homme meant that they were not destined for the long haul.

“I felt that in Kyuss we were so fiercely defending something that when we looked up we said ‘Fuck!’ and realised that we were painted into a corner of our own making,” Homme says. “I loved Kyuss. I wouldn’t change a moment of my time in that band, but I left because I loved it and I wanted to preserve it by destroying it.”

The dissolution of Kyuss in 1995 resulted in a confused period for Josh Homme. He moved to Seattle where he joined The Screaming Trees as second guitarist. By 1997 he had rekindled his friendship with Oliveri (who had been playing in sleaze-punk band The Dwarves under the name Rex Everything) and Alfredo Hernandez, who briefly replaced Brant Bjork as Kyuss drummer in the band’s dying days. They returned to the Palm Desert region and put together what became the earliest manifestation of Queens Of The Stone Age.

It was an incredible U-turn for Homme: where Kyuss was – even during their short tenure with Elektra records – a defiantly underground band, the first self-titled, self-financed QOTSA album had a ravenous eye on the mainstream. To this day Kyuss have a devoted posthumous cult following, and for many of these true believers the MTV-friendly approach of Queens is apostasy. From the get-go, Homme has taken a perverse delight in rubbing the purists up the wrong way.

He admits to a slight unease at his new status as a ‘celebrity’. People who have never heard a note of Queens Of The Stone Age’s music now know him as part of that vague aristocracy of people who are famous for being famous. The fact that he is part of a ‘rock couple’ with Distillers frontwoman Brody Dalle helps to keep him in the gossip columns.

“That’s the part that’s so hard,” he says. “It’s only good for collaborating with other artists and for getting a table in a restaurant. My personality is not geared for it. I feel like I give enough through the music, and if you want extra you’re not going to get it without a fight. I don’t like people knowing about me. Some things are private… y’know, fuck off.”

He is, however, aware that intrusions into his private life go with the job. “I’m not complaining. I understand that. See, the ‘suck’ part of being a musician is extremely small. The ‘suck’ part of being a roofer is extremely large. I’ve done both. I went from a hard-working job to working hard at this job, and I remember that. I just love to play and I love people, and to me things have just got more simple as time goes on.”

It’s ironic, particularly at the moment, when the A-list of rock is so sorely depleted, that Queens Of The Stone Age should be taking flack for being successful, when truth is that the purists and the true believers need a band like Queens more now than they will ever need them.

“I doubt that some of our detractors would have the balls to do what we’ve done, because it’s not easy. I think you have to humble yourself at the altar of rock’n’roll. You put the music first and then realise that you’re not entitled to play music. It’s a gift. You’ve got to be really careful. You spit in the face of music and you will be gone. Music is a whole series of steep stairs on the way up, but it’s a fireman’s pole on the way down.”

Originally published in Classic Rock magazine issue 80, May 2005

Allan McLachlan spent the late 70s studying politics at Strathclyde University and cut his teeth as a journalist in the west of Scotland on arts and culture magazines. He moved to London in the late 80s and started his life-long love affair with the metropolitan district as Music Editor on City Limits magazine. Following a brief period as News Editor on Sounds, he went freelance and then scored the high-profile gig of News Editor at NME. Quickly making his mark, he adopted the nom de plume Tommy Udo. He moved onto the NME‘s website, then Xfm online before his eventual longer-term tenure on Metal Hammer and associated magazines. He wrote biographies of Nine Inch Nails and Charles Manson. A devotee of Asian cinema, Tommy was an expert on ‘Beat’ Takeshi Kitano and co-wrote an English language biography on the Japanese actor and director. He died in 2019. 

Dream Theater did more than any band to turn prog metal into a viable commercial force. When Metal Hammer met up with them in 2009 to talk about their new album, Black Clouds & Silver Linings, they had stepped up to arena-headlining level and were ready to push things even further – even if that record would be the last one drummer Mike Portnoy recorded with the band for 16 years.

After a moment’s bafflement, an amused smile flickers onto Mike Portnoy’s lips. Dream Theater have featured in Metal Hammer often before, mostly in retrospective-themed articles, but the drummer has just learned that this interview is the first to promote a brand new album.

“It’s about fuckin’ time!” he roars into the recorder, playfully exclaiming: “What the fuck took you guys so long?”

Given that the album concerned, Black Clouds & Silver Linings, is the 10th of a career that next year reaches the quarter-century mark, he might have a point. But in stark contrast to the rest of the world, the UK as a whole has only just begun playing catch-up with Dream Theater.

From 1993 onwards, despite record company apathy and the vagaries of our fickle musical climate, Britain somehow managed to retain a place in Dream Theater’s tour itineraries. Though weaned upon the then still deeply unfashionable sounds of such 1970s prog rock acts as Yes, Genesis and King Crimson, the band also successfully wooed the live audiences of Iron Maiden and Megadeth. However, Dream Theater’s complex genetic breakdown only ever really muddied the waters of perception.

Finally able to headline for two nights at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, profile-wise the band – completed by vocalist James LaBrie, guitarist John Petrucci, bassist John Myung, keyboard wizard Jordan Rudess – continued to fly beneath the radar of mainstream acceptance.

It’s only since the likes of Opeth, Coheed And Cambria and The Mars Volta smashed down the prog-rock barriers, and having rid itself of a major label deal to sign with Roadrunner Records for 2007’s Systematic Chaos album, that Dream Theater could summon a discernable growth spurt. A spot at Download in 2007 marked the group’s first time on a British festival stage before, riding the crest of a wave, returning to headline the capital’s Wembley Arena four months later.

“Things have moved fast for us in the UK these last couple of years,” agrees Mike. “With the earliest gigs at the Marquee, then the Astoria and the Forum, it was a case of taking baby steps. It took us longer here than anywhere else in the world, but it’s been a fulfilling ride and I’d rather take a slow road and arrive eventually than a fast one and be gone within a year.”

After spending so long shackled to East West Records and various spin-off imprints that viewed them as some sort of inexplicably profitable white elephant, the band was happy to leave when the contract expired.

“We were counting down the days,” smiles Mike. “We made seven albums for East West in 15 years, and they opened a lot of doors for us at the start but it wore off real quick.”

That the band was forced into collaborating with Bon Jovi/Aerosmith hitmaker Desmond Child on the 1997 album Falling Into Infinity says everything of the levels of misunderstanding involved.

“That whole debacle was the final straw, it made us put our foot down and demand that things changed,” Mike sighs wearily. “To them, although we generated a lot of money, we were just a name on a roster. Nobody gave a shit about us and they certainly never understood us.”

Consequently, Dream Theater fully appreciates the value of Roadrunner’s care and attention.

“Could this be happening to us in the UK were we signed to any other label? That’s an interesting question,” muses Mike. “Creatively we do what we do with no outside interference, but Roadrunner’s promotion and marketing has helped us to reach some younger kids. They are hands-down the best metal label out there.

“We’ve toured with Deep Purple and Yes, and the same fans that followed those bands in their heydays still see them now, so their audiences have reached 50 and 60 years old,” he adds. “But here we are almost 25 years into our own career and we no longer exclusively play to the same fans that came to our shows in the 1990s. Our audience ranges from 12-year-olds to grey-haired prog-heads.”

This has plenty to do with Dream Theater’s triumphant spot on the Dimebag Darrell stage at Download 2007.

“After 21 years of waiting, to generate such a buzz in the UK was intense – no pun on the word ‘tent’ intended,” he grins, referring to the fact that their performance took place under canvas. “It was a bit of a cock-tease to finally play Download and not be on the main stage. But the fact that people would give up their spot to see [the day’s headliners] Iron Maiden was precious to us.”

The fact that Dream Theater could headline Wembley Arena and sell it out represented final irrefutable proof of the band’s arrival on these shores. “It felt like a moment of achievement,” volunteers Mike. “A real ‘fuck you’ to all the doubters that never got what we were about and said that we would only last for a couple of albums.”

Among the fundamental reasons for Dream Theater’s longevity is the group’s longstanding obsession with overkill – their concerts last for three hours and feature extended drum, guitar and keyboard solos, while their conceptual releases are dismissed as indulgent. Ironically, of course, the band are often mocked for the exact same reasons that their fans love them.

“We do what we do!” says Mike throwing his hands in the air. “We stick to our guns and demand that people change for us, not the other way around. And you know what? It’s starting to happen. Not so long ago the term ‘progressive’ was a dirty word, now it’s cool. The new Mastodon album [Crack The Skye] is a perfect example. Meshuggah, Tool and The Mars Volta are all helping the music scene in 2009 to evolve.”

Of course, these things always move in cycles and Mike owns up to being perturbed by the thought of the bubble bursting again in five years, leaving us with more long-faced bastards that cannot play their instruments.

“It worries the hell out of me,” he frowns. “We’ve been outcasts for our whole career. If what we do becomes some sort of trend, will we die with it? All I know for sure is that prog hasn’t been this big since the 1970s, which can only be a good thing.”

As unapologetically epic and heroically overblown as anything the band has attempted in the past, the new album, Black Clouds & Silver Linings, contains just six songs – four of which are more than 12 minutes long. There is also a three-disc Collector’s Edition Deluxe Boxed Set that unites six cover songs (one of which being a version of Iron Maiden’s To Tame A Land), another disc of instrumental versions and a DVD of variable ‘stem mixes’ that will allow the fans to finetune and remix the way the record sounds.

“We’re not mellowing with age, that’s for sure,” Mike smirks. “It’s an extreme album, in terms of its metallic content and overall breakdown.”

The drummer is quite right. In the rush to acclaim Dream Theater’s musicianship and sheer orgiastic love of going over the top, critics often overlook their punishing levels of intensity.

“This is a dark, heavy and contemporary-sounding album,” nods Mike. “It would stand its ground alongside any modern metal release – Slipknot, Trivium… whoever – but writing-wise the old Dream Theater mentality still shines through.”

The previous album’s introduction of growled vocals, courtesy of Mike himself, is something that has caused heated debate.

“It did alienate some of our more traditional fans, but it’s only one side of the puzzle,” he points out. “James [LaBrie] is absolutely the right singer for the band, but when we hired him [in 1991] the operatic style of a Geoff Tate [Queensrÿche] or Steve Perry [ex-Journey] was very much in demand. In the here and now, for us to be viewed as a contemporary metal band, the vocals need to embrace that side of the music.”

Any potted history of Dream Theater reminds us that James was given a ‘shape up or ship out’ ultimatum before 2002’s Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence album.

“James has improved his weaker points, whether it’s the way he sings or acts onstage,” insists Mike. “He’s more concerned about those things than anyone else, but he has a great range and we certainly don’t want to abandon the quality of his voice because it’s become a strong trademark of ours.”

Another fascinating element of the group’s last few releases, from Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence onwards, is a collection of soul-bearing songs composed by Mike about his former addiction to alcohol that will someday be performed as a whole. Known as the Twelve-Step Suite, it ends with the new record’s The Shattered Fortress.

“I don’t think anyone else has done a concept piece that sprawls over five albums and seven years, and I’m glad I did it,” enthuses Mike. “But I didn’t fully anticipate the amount of work it would entail. Submitting The Shattered Fortress to the band felt a bit like handing in a homework assignment to a teacher.”

There is no trace of boastfulness when Mike casually states: “We are the biggest band of this whole [progressive-metal] genre”. With minimum sales of half a million copies for each of the group’s albums, it is an inarguable fact. Inevitably, Dream Theater ended up overtaking certain bands that had predated and inspired them. In the case of Queensrÿche, this didn’t go down too well. Back in 2006 when that band’s Geoff Tate voiced the opinion that, “We’re about writing songs and Dream Theater are about playing a lot of notes”, Mike uncharacteristically lost his rag, batting back with, “That’s because they can’t play as many notes as us. And it’s ironic to hear that from Geoff, who hasn’t written a good song in 10 years.”

Finally, with Queensrÿche set to make an appearance in their home state of Washington in August as one-off special guests on the North American leg of Dream Theater’s Progressive Nation package tour (joining Zappa Plays Zappa, Pain Of Salvation and Beardfish), the feud seems set to end.

“Geoff and I are very different personalities and we’ve seen each other a couple of times since our war of words,” reveals Mike. “We’re not best friends, but we’ve been cordial to each other.”

Here in Europe, the Progressive Nation bill is set to be completed by Opeth, Bigelf and Unexpect. Continental dates for September and October 2009 have already been announced and Mike insists that the UK will not be left out.

The touring marriage of Dream Theater and Opeth only picks at the scab of a long-threatened and distinctly mouth-watering collaboration between Mike, Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt and Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree. The drummer raises his eyes skywards when reminded of this fact.

“Stupidly, one of us mentioned it years ago and it now crops up in every interview. Just tell Mikael and Steven that I’m game,” he sums up. “If those guys can organise their schedules, I’m ready to rock.”

Messrs Åkerfeldt and Wilson: the ball is now officially in your court.

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 193, June 2009

Dave Ling was a co-founder of Classic Rock magazine. His words have appeared in a variety of music publications, including RAW, Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Prog, Rock Candy, Fireworks and Sounds. Dave’s life was shaped in 1974 through the purchase of a copy of Sweet’s album ‘Sweet Fanny Adams’, along with early gig experiences from Status Quo, Rush, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Yes and Queen. As a lifelong season ticket holder of Crystal Palace FC, he is completely incapable of uttering the word ‘Br***ton’.