IT’S early morning when I connect by video call to Josh Homme at his Californian home.
The Queens Of The Stone Age singer tells me the kids have been dropped off at school and he’s ready to talk.
Last month, Queens Of The Stone Age returned to touring for the first time in three years.
Their shows in Columbus and Boston, and release of In Times New Roman, their heavy and brutal eighth album, marks the rebirth of the singer who personally, has been to rock bottom.
“We’ve only played two shows, but in Boston I shut my eyes and bathed in it for a sec,” says Homme.
“The moon was high, the air was cool and the audience was dancing.
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“Finally, there was nothing wrong. It had all gone. I made it and now, I want to live.”
It’s been six years since the desert rockers released Villains and in his time away from music, Homme has been through an acrimonious divorce with Distillers’ singer Brody Dalle and a well-publicised custody battle for their three kids.
He was also diagnosed with cancer last year and underwent successful surgery and has lost many close friends including former bandmate Mark Lanegan and Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins.
Today he’s juggling dad duties with band promo and says: “My kids are fantastic.
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“Camille is 17, Ryder is 11 and Wolfie is seven and they’re all coming with me to Europe. They are packing and excited as they are going to work with me.
“I guess my new life has begun and that’s coincided with me turning 50 last month.”
‘I’ve learned so much in a condensed period’
“I had my littles, my folks and about 15 friends and we had dinner in the backyard. It felt like my old life has gone, and my new life has begun.”
Making In Times New Roman has been therapeutic for the frontman who says he couldn’t write for a long time when he was feeling so low.
“I needed to get past lots of the ups and downs,” he tells me taking a drag from his vape.
“Music and writing are everything to me I just don’t know what I would do without this creativity. I don’t have another vehicle to get it out.
“And I’ve learned so much in a condensed period of time. So, it might sound odd to say, but I’m really thankful to have that as I’m in a much different place than I was before.”
Homme has been publicly quiet outside of the courtroom about his divorce and custody battle besides a statement he released earlier this year, that read: “In March 2022, the Los Angeles Family Court awarded Joshua Homme sole legal custody of all three children, and they are currently under the care of their father and paternal grandparents.
“Dalle was granted supervised visitation with their youngest child in the interim.”
It continued: “Joshua Homme will remain the sole legal guardian of all minor children until a custody hearing in the fall of 2023, at which point a more permanent solution will be determined by the Los Angeles Family Court.”
Of his silence, today he says: “For a guy who will talk s**t there’s some things that I would never engage in.
“Many times, I’ve behaved very feral and made mistakes but certain things that are just sacrosanct. There’s a time to be quiet. I have no presence online.
“There are lines I just won’t cross. You close your eyes and let it wash over you and just be quiet.”
He adds: “The adoration and hatred of strangers is like a flip side of a coin. I’ve been here before, for a multitude of reasons, both deserved and undeserved. And when you’re not doing it for the money, that currency has no value.
“It’s not my job to go door to door and say, ‘Hey, you jumped to some conclusion. That’s not true.’
“My job is to show the littles in my house what you do when that happens.
“My job in those situations is to shut the f* up. Put my shoulders back and my head up and walk into the room.”
It was November last year that Homme was able to start writing the new album.
He says: “I was too close and I was afraid of what I was going to say. I had notebooks of lyrics, that read like teenage goth poetry.
“By November, I had accepted it all — the deaths, the losses, the heartache, the trauma and the disbelief.”
Emotion Sickness, the first single from In Times New Roman is the album’s most direct song about his split with Dalle, who he was married to for 14 years.
Homme says: “I just don’t want to be the last person holding on to what isn’t mine with the heartache loss of things.
“And, in the case of the loss side I’d lost 11 people in a year. These were people close to me who had all died. These people are gone but I still love them.
“So, writing took all this weight off my shoulders and allowed me to just write about what’s real and not worry about it.
"The feelings were honest and raw. That’s why this album sounds brutal.
“I was feeling so raw and the music is the actual sound of it. The song sounds unfinished and it should be.
“There’s a fragile and delicate sentiment that should smash into the music and shove it away. All these elements shouldn’t gently baton pass, they should kick and push and smash into each other.
“So even before the words are there, you’re dealing with some sort of brutality.”
Homme says making the album kept him strong emotionally and allowed him to process what was happening to him.
Paper Machete is classic QOTSA where Homme doesn’t hold back to how he is feeling and includes lyrics: “My love is dead/You speak lioness and damsel in distress so fluently/You sculpt, you change, you hide, then you erase.”
He explains “Someone said it sounds very angry and yeah, it’s OK for me to be angry and hurt once in a while, as long as that’s not all you’re running on. It can’t be your only fuel.
“I’m honestly describing that emotion. And there’s a lot of them on the record.”
He adds: “I want my last record I ever make to be my best one and the only way to get there is to not fall victim to what happens and lose the plot.
“People can get too soft, make too much money, get too famous and lose their artistic way. Like, there’s so many different ways to f*** this up.
‘Unforgettable moment of celebration’
“With the guys, part of the excitement is being lost in a maze and trying, by any means necessary, to find our way out. Making this album was my only way through this.
“The opening track, Obscenery was the perfect combination of sentiment that wasn’t just inside myself, but also about the outside.
"While Carnavoyeur was a made-up word I came up with because I was having trouble with what I wanted to say.
“Like obscenery — you know exactly what I mean. Those words are designed to get as close to how I felt, as possible. If Bill Shakespeare did it, why can’t I?”
In Times New Roman was self-produced by the band and recorded at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La and at Homme’s Pink Duck studios.
Homme says: “It was actually a real blessing because it’s close to where I live and really close to school.
"It’s a wide-open space of grass and the ocean is distant so you look around and exhale.”
With his hair longer and slicked back than before, the singer looks well and has new tattoos to mark the recent loss of close friends actor Rio Hackford, Hawkins and Lanegan, who all died in 2022.
Performing at Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts in London and Los Angeles last year was an important and moving day for Homme.
“It isn’t often that you’re asked to bite down on a recipe that has such pain and pleasure,” he says.
“As a young kid crying was not really an option in my house.
“It wasn’t till later in my life that I could allow myself to use nature’s steam valve. And the vitality of that.
“So, you know, it was an unforgettable moment of celebration, based on an unforgettable moment of f***ing awful.
“It was also a real testament to Dave [Grohl] for being just a wonderful friend and person to him. Who other than Dave could have said goodbye in a way that would be so appropriate for Taylor.
“Just being there felt happy. Then suddenly, you’d be pounded with pain.
“Taylor was such a fan of music. And he used to call me at 6.30 in the morning just to tell me Phil Collins is one of the best drummers. Ever. His death got me good.
“It’s a weird duality with Mark’s death, because I can’t believe he lived that long.
“I also cannot believe that he died because he’d made it that far. I lovingly, jokingly would say, he was the meanest guy that I knew that I liked.
“I’m direct — but he was in a very different way. He would make me laugh with his bluntness.
“There was one time we were talking and I could see a fan hovering. This fan moved forward and said: ‘I just want to say Mark, you’ve changed my life’. And Mark looked over and goes, ‘So?’
‘Being a father is everything to me’
“He said it in a way that this kid was devastated. But that was Mark and he made me laugh and I’ll never forget him because of that.”
Next week QOTSA return to the UK to play shows in Halifax, Margate, Cardiff and Glastonbury where they will headline The Other Stage on Sunday night.
They’ve also just announced an arena tour in November.
“Glastonbury will be good. We are on at the same time as Elton John. I love Elton.
“He’s just been so kind to me, so I’m looking forward to stopping in between songs and listening to Elton for a second. And then get back to business.
“My mum said we should play Goodbye Yellow Brick Road at the same time he does. It’s a good idea.”
As our time comes to an end, Homme reiterates how happy he is to be back with a new album and over his personal turmoil.
And while music and writing In Times New Roman helped him through his darkest moments, he says being here today and being able to deal with mental health issues was because of his kids.
“Being a father is everything to me,” he says proudly. “Showing emotion and understanding is what little ones need to see too, so they understand.
“And fatherhood is about getting up and being there for them. They’ve got me through my darkness.
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“You can be sad, heartbroken, in love and lost but you still have to get up in the morning and do something about it. It’s the thing that starts you.”
- In Times New Roman is out today.
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