{"id":340380,"date":"2025-08-13T05:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T05:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/340380\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T05:42:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T05:42:11","slug":"the-album-josh-homme-said-made-him-a-better-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/340380\/","title":{"rendered":"The album Josh Homme said made him a better person"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Josh<\/p>\n

(Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)<\/p>\n

Wed 13 August 2025 1:00, UK <\/p>\n

Queens of the Stone Age <\/a>aren\u2019t an albums band. Josh Homme and whichever crew of stoner-rock tough nuts he can assemble that week are one of the great singles bands of their time, and one of the great live bands of the 21st century. <\/p>\n

All that quality doesn\u2019t often translate into the studio, where their tendency to noodle over half-baked riffs and half-formed song ideas can make the mind wander away from the sheer magic of songs like \u2018First It Giveth\u2019, \u2018No One Knows\u2019 and \u2018Burn the Witch\u2019. <\/p>\n

This may be my taste speaking, but at the same time, I don\u2019t really think that Homme built Queens of the Stone Age for being an albums kind of band. A lot of the time, it doesn\u2019t seem like he built them for anything other than proving his own reputation as one of the coolest people Palm Springs, California, ever produced. Not bad for a part of town that gave the world both Lucille Ball and Katherine Hepburn. If anything, sweating over the minutiae of a song\u2019s bridge would go against the very soul of the band itself. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not me patronising the band either; they\u2019re a group for whom the very point of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll is spontaneity. That overthinking is the very death of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll<\/a>, and there\u2019s a very good argument to be made there. Raw Power wasn\u2019t made by The Stooges sweating over each individual scrap of a song; it was made by figuring out during their live shows what made crowds go absolutely insane (that wasn\u2019t Iggy trying to kill himself) and somehow getting that into the studio. <\/p>\n

Thus, Queens of the Stone Age albums are often built in a similar way. Why sweat the small stuff when you could make a record with vibes alone? Their ascension to arena-slaying heights and festival headline slots proves that the whole idea works, so why am I being such a buzz kill? Well, apart from the fact that I\u2019m a rock writer, and killing buzzes is what we were put on this cursed earth to do, it\u2019s because there\u2019s one iron-clad example of just what kind of album Homme is capable of when he puts his mind to it. <\/p>\n

\"Josh<\/a>Josh Homme (Credits: Raph Pour-Hashemi)What is the album that made Josh Homme a better person? <\/p>\n

Anyone familiar with the story of Josh Homme knows that in 2010, he died. At the time, it was reported that for a few minutes, he died on the table during a surgical procedure on his leg. Turned out that it was actually an MRSA infection that he was under the knife for because his drug-addled nervous system couldn\u2019t fight it on its own. He asphyxiated on the table and was clinically dead for a few minutes before being revived by a defibrillator. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to blow your mind too much, but that\u2019s the kind of experience that changes a person. He was bedridden for the next few months and essentially had to learn how to move again afterwards. During this time, he understandably developed a deep and profound depression. An experience that he turned into the 2013 masterpiece \u2026Like Clockwork. This is the sole good Queens of the Stone Age album, and it\u2019s one of the best rock albums of the 21st century. <\/p>\n

Homme said the undercurrent of the record is just being honest, \u201cand if something is scary, walk toward it, not away from it. There\u2019s no other way I could have said any of what it says. I just want it to feel real. I think, \u2018if I do this from a real spot then [we] could be someone\u2019s favourite band in the whole world\u2019. And, ideally, these records, if you do \u2019em right, make you a little better as a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously, we can\u2019t say whether it made Josh Homme better as a person, as we don\u2019t know him personally. However, Queens of the Stone Age definitely made the step up to being one of the biggest bands of their generation due to it. So it definitely made them a better band. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that one can only make great art when they\u2019ve suffered, but that great art takes time and attention. It may not be rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, but sometimes that\u2019s what makes it great. <\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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