Wednesday, July 1st 2009

News:  Them Crooked Vultures

Queens Of Led Foo? Stone Age Zeppelin Fighters? Whatever Works…

By Johnny Firecloud

The rumors are true – Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones are currently holed up in a Los Angeles recording studio, working on an album that’s been the biggest secret in rock for what seems like years now.

I pressed for more information in an interview I did yesterday with Homme’s wife, Brody Dalle of Spinnerette. Who’s singing? Who’s behind the kit? When do we get to hear it? She was faithfully tight-lipped, unfortunately, but did offer the following tease:

“I’m not at liberty to talk about it… but I think [the project] is pretty fucking amazing. Just beats and sounds like you’ve never heard before.”

We’ll let our imaginations take that ball and run with it (Songs For The Deaf meets Zeppelin IV? Yes please…).

Back in 2005, Mojo magazine did an interview with Grohl, who dropped the news as casually as mentioning the weather: “The next project that I’m trying to initiate involves me on drums, Josh Homme on guitar, and John Paul Jones playing bass. That’s the next album. That wouldn’t suck.”

We didn’t hear much more about the project after that until this past April, when French journalist Cyril Deluermoz reported that Grohl and Homme were recording together, which was shortly followed by an interview with John Paul Jones, who said the following: “I’m working on some other music, which is more rock based, with a couple of other people. We hope to be everywhere this summer.” When pressed for more information, the legendary bassist clammed up. “It’s a secret, actually,” he said. “I shouldn’t have even said that, you know? There are some exciting projects coming up, let’s put it that way.”

Exciting indeed. But summer’s here, so what gives? Chris Cornell’s guitar tech claims to have heard it, and legendary rock photographer Ross Halfin has acknowledged the recording sessions as well.

With the Foo Fighters on hiatus, Zeppelin down for what looks like the count and Queens Of The Stone Age enjoying some downtime, it would make sense that the long-discussed project would finally come to fruition this year.

Grohl has never made any attempt to hide his love for Led Zeppelin, be it with tattoos or all but offering to sell his kids for a chance to sit in John Bonham’s place for a Zeppelin reunion tour that never happened.

Furthermore, in what appears to be news of an entirely separate Homme project, Ipecac Records co-owner Greg Werckman told Rock-a-Rolla magazine that his label’s other co-owner – Mike Patton (Faith No More, Tomahawk, Fantomas, etc) – has been approached about joining Homme on some new material.

“He’s trying to get a lot of people involved in it, too,” Werckman says, before adding that Homme is “trying to convince Mike [Patton] to go out to the desert, but Mike hates the desert.”

Greg’s likely referring to Homme’s now-legendary Desert Sessions gatherings that Patton may have been invited out for, because the Grohl/Jones collaboration has been confirmed to be taking place in Los Angeles. But then again, who knows? It’s too early to tell for certain – there’s too little information involved. But for now, we can be happy knowing that somewhere, some amazing fucking music is being made, and someday we might just get to hear it.

[Thanks to Fernando for the tip!]