After cancer and loss, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme finds peace on ‘Perfecth’

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After a tumultuous period in his life that was marked by cancer, loss, and personal upheaval, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme is finding himself in a place of peace.

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His new state of mind comes as the California desert rockers drop their ninth album, the sprawling Perfecth.

“Preserving my peace has been the most important thing,” he says in a video call. “Now that I know that having some modicum of peace is a possibility, (I’m always) looking for it and looking to hold onto it when it’s there.”

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In the lead-up to the release of 2023’s In Times New Roman …, Homme, 53, had dealt with a very public and messy custody battle with his ex-wife, Distillers frontwoman Brody Dalle, and recovered from cancer surgery while still reeling from the deaths of several musician friends, including Screaming Trees’ Mark Lanegan and the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins.

“I think difficulties that everyone will experience, I had the benefit of experiencing all that in a tiny timeframe,” Homme says, looking back on that moment of his life. “That tight timeframe helps put your priorities in order and gave me a real sense of appreciation.”

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Even before the turmoil, the band had begun taking its time between albums. Homme wanted the passage of time and his life experiences to factor into the music Queens were putting out.

Alt-country songstress Nikki Lane, who duets with Homme on the melancholic Easy Street, told the singer and multi-instrumentalist he needed to spend some time living. That mindset, he says, shaped Perfecth, an album also influenced by Francisco Goya’s dark masterpiece, Saturn Devouring His Son.

“I think the benefit of gaining this appreciation for the little things and the benefit of prioritizing what’s important and what’s not … helped this record be very clear,” Homme says.

Queens’ latest LP embraces love and vulnerability

After starting out in the mid-1990s, Queens — whose other members include guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, bassist Michael Shuman, keyboardist Dean Fertita and drummer Jon Theodore — built a reputation for their riff-heavy sound. Their 2000 album Rated R helped raise their profile, opening with the hard-charging Feel Good Hit of the Summer, which features the lyrics, “Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol.”

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“We have a strangeness and a quirk to us that cannot be taught,” Homme says of the band’s winding journey. But looking inward has allowed Homme to musically ride the highs and lows of life.

Perfecth’s nine songs mine different forms of love: that of family, friends, maybe even strangers. There are the loves that have broken Homme and the loves that made him whole again.

Even young love figures into the record’s third single, Where the Goth Girls At?

“Watching the goth girls working the counter at JCPenney and giving goth makeovers to the old ladies, that’s when I knew the only place I want to be is where the goth girls at,” Homme quips. “Teenage love, ain’t it grand?”

“One of my takeaways from a tumultuous few years was the importance of accepting something for what it is,” Homme says. “I think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to project what I wish onto scenarios. But I think the absence of realism in that idea is not helpful and accepting what is, is more important.”

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Fans of Queens have been drawn to Homme’s crunchy guitars and the dark themes in the band’s catalogue, especially in songs such as The Vampyre of Time and Memory and I Appear Missing.

But on Perfecth, the band expands its musical palette, veering from balladry (It’s Only Love) to sinewy Bowie-esque swagger (Sunday) to sensual acoustic grooves (Phantom Limb).

“At this point, we play loud, we play mellow, we play fast … We’re not going to do anything too much,” Homme says.

‘I love the mistakes. I love the scars’

In the midst of rehearsals for a tour that will take Queens to parts of Asia and Australasia in November and December, Homme says that he approaches music nowadays by asking himself what he’s gotten too comfortable doing.

“I like to say, ‘What are my habits?’ And then try to say, ‘I’m going to break some of these right now.’ I think it feels good to realize you’re doing something in a way that you haven’t previously,” he says, smiling.

Making mistakes and rough edges are baked into the spirit of the band.

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The waltzy, keyboard-driven Insignificant Other, which the band calls the centrepiece of Perfecth, was recorded in only two takes.

“I love the mistakes. I love the scars,” Homme says. “I think when you meet someone that’s a real character, they don’t tell you about their successes. Their stories are largely ensconced in their difficulties and failures and the comedy of those events. I think I’ve always had a reverence for scar tales.”

Queens have graduated from clubs to arenas. They got their first taste of stadiums when they opened for System of a Down and Foo Fighters this summer.

The jump was hard for Homme to wrap his head around.

“I think I was mystified by how big everything was all summer long,” he says.

Last year’s Catacombs Tour found Queens back inside smaller venues as they reimagined songs from across their catalogue.

Homme says those rooms are where he and his bandmates are most at home.

“I tend to like theatre vibes because I like it when the venue is as cool as the music you hope you’re playing is. Then it all feels like one extension,” he says.

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It also fits with his anti-corporate mindset.

“It’s no secret that I have a bit of an authority problem. I don’t like places that are expensive to the fan experience. I don’t like when there’s a corporation between the fans and the band,” he says.

Homme says friendship with Dave Grohl built on ‘honesty’

Touring with the Foo Fighters reunited Homme with Dave Grohl, who played drums on Queens’ 2002 LP Songs for the Deaf and on part of 2013’s …Like Clockwork.

Homme and Grohl’s friendship dates back to the 1990s, and he calls their bond a rarity in music.

“We’ve known each other for so long that it’s a relationship of honesty. We can really just be ourselves. New relationships you make now take time. With us, there’s years of experience that you couldn’t just make with someone new,” he says.

Like Homme, who traded Kyuss, the stoner rock band he founded as a teenager, for Queens, Grohl managed to build Foo Fighters out of the ashes of Nirvana.

“I’ve always said Dave has a golden horseshoe up his butt and he makes great musical decisions,” Homme chuckles. “I’ve watched him enjoy this profession that has confounded and frustrated and confused me … but at other times, it’s been a dopamine rush and a beautiful thing. Getting those two disparate things to make nice with each other can be difficult. But watching him enjoy what this is … is like slipping into a warm bath,” he says.

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While out on the road, the pair also discussed reviving Them Crooked Vultures, the supergroup they formed with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones in 2009. But Homme suggests timing remains the biggest obstacle to the band’s return.

“Restarting a band is a lot like jumping into a game of Double Dutch,” he says. “Sometimes you jump in and get slapped by a bunch of ropes. Other times you jump in and you’re hopping around. It’s really about timing.”

In addition to Queens and Them Crooked Vultures, Homme plays with Eagles of Death Metal. He’s also produced albums by Iggy Pop and Arctic Monkeys.

Continuing his habit of pushing himself outside his comfort zone, Homme collaborated with Shania Twain this summer on her song Faded Blue Jeans.

“That was exactly the type of world-jumping I’m into,” Homme says of that surprise teamup.

Homme has never sought the spotlight. He jokes one of the only boxes he likes to check is that the band likes to take the stage in the dark. He was also never driven by fame.

So he’s exactly where he wants to be — and the younger him would view his success much the same way he does today.

“He would think the same thing that the 53-year-old Josh thinks, which is, I can’t believe it’s lasted this long. I’m sure there are people out there that feel the very same way,” he says as his lips turn into a wry smile. “I never thought this would lead to this life, so I just appreciate it.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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