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Josh Homme — the piratical leader of renegade rock’n’roll titans Queens of the Stone Age; a musician deeply embedded into the fabric of modern rock (Dave Grohl, Iggy Pop and Alex Turner have all called upon his services), and a frontman whose loose hips and considerable charm once gave him the early nickname Ginger Elvis — has that most humanising of things: a bit of a cold. He slumps face first onto the sofa of his posh London hotel, a 6ft 5in tree felled at the ankles, and groans. He would quite like a respirator, he jokes, but in the absence of the required tech, we will crack on. Bleary-eyed from a 17-hour drive from Antwerp last night — the previous stop on a short, stripped-back European tour celebrating their recent Alive in the Catacombs film (“We won’t play many gigs like this. This will not last,” he warns) — it’s endearing to see the towering frontman of one of the world’s most beloved rock bands in a moment of such normality. But then again, over recent years, Homme has been laid bare — not just musically (though their performance in the hallowed, gothic Parisian tunnels, as seen in the film, did necessitate a total reworking of their material), but in his life as a whole. “Anyone that’s been through a family separation knows the f***ing terror, but when you’ve done so well that it becomes fodder for people to pretend they know [what’s going on] and there are kids involved,” he begins, referencing his much-publicised split from ex-wife and Distillers singer Brody Dalle, “and then people die around you, and then they keep dying, and then you almost die, those things — as difficult as they are — have been gifts to get somewhere. Metamorphosis is painful. “Do you think a caterpillar crawls into a chrysalis and thinks, ‘This is great in here?’ That shit f***ing hurts. But my grandpa was famous for saying life is hard because it’s worth it.” Last year, Homme did almost die. It wasn’t his first brush with mortality; following knee surgery in 2010, he briefly “died on the operating table”. But this time, he had to look death quite literally in the eye. Having undergone successful treatment for cancer in 2022, Queens’s long-dreamed-of Catacombs performance came just as the frontman was being rushed into hospital due to further health complications. Having lobbied to film there for over a decade, he played the show, surrounded by the remains of six million Parisians. The next day, he went under the knife for emergency surgery and was subsequently bedridden for seven months. There’s a new song they’ve been playing, Easy Street, which contains the cheeky line “Just shut up and f*** me” — so far, so sexy; so far, so Queens. But, says Homme, “shut up and f*** me is an ethos too, because that’s what the Catacombs were. There were moments where I was saying to myself, ‘I can’t do this’. But that’s shut up and f*** me; that’s what that moment is. Stop talking. Let’s go. So that’s what you do.” He grins, gold tooth glinting, Velo nicotine pouch poking out from his bottom teeth (he’s been trying to cut out the smokes): “Perhaps it could have been said more eloquently…” It’s this duality — serious and playful, heavy yet flirtatious — that’s steered Queens of the Stone Age over the past 30 years from desert rock outliers to globally recognised household names; a band big enough to go up against both Beyoncé in 2011 and Elton John in 2023 as rivalling Glastonbury stage headliners. Having formed in 1996 following the dissolution of his stoner-rock early project Kyuss, Homme has helmed various iterations of Queens, with members including Grohl and the late, great Mark Lanegan coming and going, with the same ethos throughout: to dance with abandon to the beat of their own drum. “That’s why we’re called Queens of the Stone Age. The first thing out of the gate was: I’m not gonna play to a f***ing bunch of boys,” Homme says of their machismo-shunning outlook within the male-dominated 1990s rock scene. “No homophobes, no racists, no misogynists. That was always the goal.” If Grohl is (or was) known as the nicest man in rock, then Homme might be the genre’s most idiosyncratic. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool outsider; a man who, successful as he is, still rejects the idea of conforming to any notion of mainstream acceptance. “They call it a following because you follow me, I don’t follow you. That’s a circle — that’s how toilets are made,” he says. “If you’re lucky enough and you work hard enough that this gets to be your job, no turning around is necessary. It should just be: Machete. Jungle. Face forward. Go.” But he’s also totally devoid of any old-school rock star posturing. Go on to the band’s Instagram and you’ll find a recent video of Homme dancing around his dressing room to Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack. “Someone the other day said to me, ‘You are a very silly man,’” he says, adopting a wizened old German accent. “And I just said, ‘Yes, that is correct.’” Homme is, he readily admits, “a complex character”. “My complexities have gotten me into trouble many times, and rightfully so, and the mob takes everything,” he notes. In 2017, he issued an apology after appearing to kick the camera out of a photographer’s hand. “I’m gonna have to figure out some stuff, I think. Cos rock’n’roll is a wonderful thing. It’s supposed to save and help people, not mess them up,” he said following the incident. Today, Homme is enjoying the new challenge of the Catacombs tour and the vulnerability of his current crooner era; of playing these songs without the amps turned up to 11 and tapping into a different part of himself. “I’ve realised — especially now that I don’t do drugs all the time — that I’m an emotional roller coaster,” he says. “In order to walk up there and [be the frontman], it’s like, if your personality is a home then I have to turn off all the other lights in the house and just leave the attic light on. “And if I stay in the attic and play in the attic too long, I start to degenerate and lose my mind. So this is coming at a good time because I needed the Catacombs, and I needed this tour because I feel scared to go on stage again. There’s a lot of silence, and silence is the loudest that quiet can ever get, so you have to be willing to hang onto it.” Right now — despite the sniffles — Homme says he’s “physically never been better in [his] life”. The day after we speak, Queens of the Stone Age will bring their show to the Royal Albert Hall — the band’s first time in the iconic building, but Homme’s third following career-peak dates with Them Crooked Vultures, his supergroup alongside Grohl and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, and as part of Iggy Pop’s band for his acclaimed Post Pop Depression LP. “For Vultures, we were doing the Daltrey children’s benefit [Teenage Cancer Trust], so it wasn’t our own show,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, especially at that time in my life, ‘Well this is the only way I’m ever gonna get in the door here.’ I’ve had the ‘I’ll probably get thrown out’ mentality for too long, which I’ve really tried to let go of because it doesn’t make sense.” Fifteen years on, and not only has Homme propelled Queens through the door, he’s sat them at the top table. The frontman remains a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of rock star: magnetic, funny, eloquent, ridiculously cool. But these days, he’s trying to be a more steady guy too. “From 13 ‘til 46, I was raised to shut up and [get on with it], which is frankly quite English,” he notes. “Now all that has gone. I’m in my fifties, Elvis was dead a long time before that…” For his ginger compadre, however, the quest continues. “I don’t wanna have a bucket list,” Homme smiles, glint in his eye: “I wanna have an empty bucket.” Queens of the Stone: Alive in the Catacombs is available to watch at qotsa.com; Queens of the Stone Age will play Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in July, 2026 The intro with the descending strings is just so beautiful. Sebastian is at his best when he’s terrified of looking in the mirror. I like to dance to Goldfrapp before I go play a show.
