Saturday, April 2nd 2011
News: Queens Of The Stone Age
Josh Homme On Jesse Hughes, Stone Gossard & Soul Sucking Labels
Nearly two weeks in to their sold out North American club tour, Queens Of The Stone Age descended upon Toronto’s boisterous and overpacked Sound Academy for a dose of the band’s self-titled debut album, which was reissued last month on Domino Records. Earlier that day, frontman Josh Homme and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen sat down with Toronto radio personality and host of The Ongoing History Of New Music, Alan Cross.
The results were a fascinating glimpse into the current happenings of Homme and his ever-growing network of fine musician friends, as well as a tale of label bureaucracy made right by a certain member of Pearl Jam. Mr. Cross opted to mix his own brand of quirky fan-boy inquiries with fan submitted questions he collected on Twitter earlier in the day, and the results were fascinating.
Intermingling spontaneous yet thought provoking analogies with the slightest tidbits of info has been Homme’s game for a long time now, and this interview was no different. Among the revelations were peeks into impending releases by the Arctic Monkeys and Jesse Hughes.
With the June 7th release of the Arctic Monkeys’ fourth record Suck It And See looming, Homme revealed that he dropped vocals for one of the tracks. As for Jesse Hughes, Homme could barely contain his excitement about the new solo record the man known as Boots Electric is quietly working on. Having recently heard studio cuts, Homme claimed it was as fun as “watching a bunch of superballs being dumped off the 10th floor.”
The album (which may or may not be called Boots Electric Fabulous Weapon) has been in the works for a couple of years now and still does not yet have a release date.
In perhaps the most interesting segment of the interview, between disclosing comical stories of screwing over concert promoters in Boston and shit talking “record label people,” Homme alluded to the reasoning behind his decision to re-release the self-titled record and tour on it now.
According to Homme, music industry dinosaurs were the sole reason the album sat in limbo for so many years. Stone Gossard of Pearl Jam, who signed QOTSA to Loosegroove and held the North American rights, gave the rights back to Homme, resulting in the recent (and long awaited) re-release. In Josh’s own words, “Stone Gossard = awesome”.
We tend to agree.
“It’s really all business, why it wasn’t out,” Homme explained. “It was on Loosegroove who’s Stone Gossard, who actually gave me my record back. Loosegroove went out of business, and so getting that record out in North America just went ‘nope!’ And you sit there and you go ‘OK. I don’t own this thing and I don’t have the right to do anything with it and the labels gone and so what do I do?’”
The ginger-capped rocker went on to admonish his former label, before expressing further gratitude for Gossard’s kindness. “And then, Roadrunner, which is a notoriously soul-sucking label, had the licence to do it for the rest of the world,” he said. “I had to basically wait until that was over. And once it was over, Stone, just being an artist and the cool guy that he is was like ‘you can have your record.’ Which he didn’t need to do.”
Scrolling through more fan submitted questions, Cross then prodded with questions about the Kyuss Lives reunion tour, which Homme seemed to be in complete support of.
The focus then shifted to the tour, and more specifically the ravenous fans that have been cramming into their shows nightly. Having expected the audiences to be oblivious to the twisted melodies of a record which had laid dormant for a decade, the band are clearly taken aback by the overwhelming response. Without file sharing, most fans wouldn’t likely have ever been exposed to the self-titled record until this recent re-release.
It was an interesting interview. We were hoping somebody in Twitter-land might have inquired about the German Salt Mine DVD, but I guess if you want something done right…
At the midway point of the tour there are still plenty of opportunities to get out and see this unique show. On top of ripping through the entire self-titled Record, they’ve recently started busting out Infinity and The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died. Get it while you can – and if you can’t, check out a collection of videos we’ve compiled so far from the tour.
Why couldn’t they have played the fun machine in boston? Probably because of the asshole in the front row screaming born to hula after every song in the second set (tell Josh I said I’m sorry)
“I THOUGHT THAT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A PURE 1998 SHOW.” God, I was right next to that ass. It took all of me not to confront him. I would have loved to hear Fun Machine, Infinity or Monsters which I’ve found they’ve been playing for encores. I’m happy with what we got, though.
I was “lucky” enough to see QOTSA in support of the first record. I have to imagine they don’t remember much of that night in San Francisco serving as main support to Ween. Looking forward to some redemption in a few days at the Wiltern!