Born on this day in 1973, in Palm Springs, California, Josh Homme’s early life was steeped in sun-scorched isolation, a kid inventing joy in a landscape better known for tumbleweeds than tunes.
He picked up a guitar at nine after being denied a drum kit, endured years of polka-centric lessons, and somehow ended up with a playing style as unconventional as the man himself.
At 14, Homme formed Katzenjammer—later Kyuss—a band that swapped garages for generator-powered ragers under the stars. These desert bacchanals weren’t gigs, they were rituals, with Kyuss laying the groundwork for what would later be canonized as stoner rock.
With producer Chris Goss at their side and Homme’s parents signing the record deal (he was still a minor), Kyuss unleashed a handful of genre-defining albums before combusting in 1995.
Homme fled to Seattle, flirted with normalcy, and briefly joined Screaming Trees. But the desert called him back, this time through his own vision. In 1996, he launched a new project called Gamma Ray, which, after a legal dispute, became Queens of the Stone Age.
The band’s early form was a revolving cast of ex-Kyuss cronies, road dogs, and Homme himself playing nearly every instrument.
Queens’ 1998 debut was raw and riff-heavy, but it was 2000’s Rated R that turned heads, stretching the sound into something looser and trippier.
Then came Songs for the Deaf in 2002, a brutal love letter to the long, strange drives through the desert, and the record that pushed QOTSA into rock’s weird mainstream.
In parallel, Homme launched The Desert Sessions in 1997 at Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, a sonic commune for strange minds to collide. These sessions were quick and unfiltered, a rotating circus of collaborators like PJ Harvey, Dean Ween, and Iggy Pop. The motto: no rules, no ego, just music. After a long silence, volumes 11 & 12 finally dropped in 2019.
Beyond QOTSA, Homme drummed in Eagles of Death Metal, created supergroup Them Crooked Vultures with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones, and shaped Iggy Pop’s Post Pop Depression.
But no matter how far he travels, Homme remains a creature of the desert: sunburned, stubborn, and always chasing the next strange sound.
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