| Sept. 2002 - Kerrang: 24 Hours - A Day in the Life of Josh Homme
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by unknown |
The singer and guitarist is no stranger to run-ins with the law. When not causing chaos on tour with Queens of the Stone Age, he seems more than happy to cause it at home. Lord help the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles…
‘EVERY DAY is an absolutely new day. I have no regular schedule, so it could start by me getting up at eight in the morning or getting up at three, or not sleeping at all. I’m a totally vague person. Sometimes I’ll have my first beer at 6pm; sometimes I’ll start at 11 in the morning and just not stop.
‘On tour, the day doesn’t vary at all. I take care of a lot of Queens’ business shit so I usually don’t imbibe till late in the day. I have to take phone calls from hysterical girls in the office like, ‘Your band’s going up in flames and everything’s a problem!’ To which I say, ‘Well, here’s the gas and matches.’
‘But because touring is so regimented and we kind of party in every town we show up in, when I’m home I like it when I have no idea what I’m gonna do. I might get up and say, ‘Today I’m going hiking in Runyon Canyon’ or ‘Today I’m not gonna sleep at all and just go right into the next day’.
‘I don’t deal with everyday shit. I recently had a warrant for a ticket that I didn’t go to court for, because I just don’t want to go to court. If it’s three at night and there’s a stop light and no one coming in any direction, then I just run the light. If laws are stupid then I just don’t follow them. The lights are there so there’s no accidents, but if I know there’s not gonna be an accident then I just go. Laws are made to keep most people in line and because people follow them. But our grandparents died for our freedom, so I’m gonna use it. I’m totally free and I’m totally thankful.
‘On tour you turn up and try and get your bearings. I usually try to find a shop that’s got fresh pastries to get some sort of vitamin or food intake. We try to go for culture in towns that have it: when we were in Bilbao we went to the Guggenheim Museum. It really depends on the country – we sort of modify our personality to each country’s personality. In Switzerland we’re absolutely neutral, but in England I guess we’re like hooligans – except we don’t like soccer and we don’t stop drinking at 11!
‘We try to play at 10 o’clock no, so we’re don’t before the curfew starts and can have some fun, too. Or we’ll have after parties. Ideally it would be like the Big Day Out tour. We’d play and then there’d be an after party every single night. Then we wouldn’t have to leave until the next day and we wouldn’t have far to go. If we have a long travel day then I stay up all night, so I’m asleep the entire time we’re dormant. I’ve been in two bus accidents so I need to be deathly tired to sleep on the bus.
‘The important part is not to get brunt out and to make each day so you actually give a shit. Lost of bands don’t give shit anymore. We played 19 shows in a row and we gave a shit every single day. In fact we got so superstitious that whatever we were doing, we didn’t stop doing it. So if you drank 15 beers one day you had to do it again the next day. And it hurts when you stop…’
Queens of the Stone Age’s new album Songs For The Deaf is out now.
Thanks to Lucie for typing this one up!
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