Joel McIver - QOTSA No-One Knows: The Queens Of The Stone Age Story

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This book is dedicated to Dimebag Darrell Abbott.

He told me, When people try to tell you what to do tell em Fuck you!

When I was asked to write this foreword, my first reaction was that of inherent but mostly been-through-it horror. Not another writer trying to vicariously rock by frotting with the pill-iratti of rockn rolls new white dope, that title belonging to rocks new figureheads, old vanguards of the new melodious heavy scree-rock sonata, Queens Of The Stone Age in futile hope that some of the toxic sweat emanating from the pores of their double-coil AA anti-average charged battery-acid attitude will rub off on them and their calloused elbows.

The horror was ephemeral. While the authors elbows remain intact, the bands fingers drip a blistering concoction of astro-arcane, acid-rain strain of music that seethes with the feeling that we arent the only ones around that feel the world is but a stage and we are all (guitar) players. I was lucky enough to hold court while touring with Kyuss, now the present members of Queens it was a royal gas. Literally. Your Highness got lit, pilot-light sky-stylie freak-kite-flying nightly. Hardly anything done light or quietly. Extremely fun-duh-mental. Visceral and true.

The exceptional excel, and the Queens are no exception to the powers of high-frequency reception innovation. They are fresh yet hauntingly familiar, like a black cat straight from the muse-magicians hat. True, they play crop circles around the field of electricity that surrounds and grounds them. Electro-magnetic hyperkinetic-phrenetic. They are monster musicians.

The feeling I get when treating my earholes to Queens Of The Stone Age is like finding a perfectly preserved ancient buttercup stem, made from the heaviest gauge of steel, hiding behind the mouldiest of old cuneiform-encrusted sarcophagi, filled with myriad virtual musical notes shimmering inside, and in that high C moment I remember what it is that I had forgotten about anyway. A dose will do ya. Its the good shit. Not for the vacuous among us. Their music spirals, ascends into ether world and curls back down, only to collect the remaining sound left resounding under troglodyte ground where we mere mortals await to hear the seers lift us into their rarified-air, sans-silence, add-loudness atmosphere. May we hear their ringing ears clear from over here, have nothing to fear my dears, because as long as the day is stoned, they will continue to manipulate their hedonistic-headphone-phoenix sound, for out of the ashes ofthose that are Long-Gone stoned, rises a monolithic spectacle to behold (theyre really tall dudes).

Heres to the rulers and perpetual reign of the masters of overground. Their Sky Pilots crown finally stripped from that Gratefully Dead old head.

Them Kings is dead. Long live the Queens.

Kat Bjelland, 2005
Babes In Toyland, Katastrophy Wife

People I like: Carlos Anaia, Adrian Ashton, Kat Bjelland, Chris Charlesworth, Richard Dawes, Helen Donlon, Daryl Easlea, Darren Edwards, Ian Glasper, Steve Harvey, Jamie Hibbard, Chris Ingham, Andy Jones, Stephen Lawson, Sian Llewellyn, Joe Matera, Martin Popoff, Scott Rowley, Paul Stenning, Tommy Udo, Sarah Watson, Henry Yates, the staff of Record Collector, Metal Hammer, Total Guitar, Future Music, Total Film, Bass Guitar, Acoustic and Classic Rock magazines and all the nice people I always regret forgetting about when I write this part.

People I like even more: Emma, Alice, Robin and Abi, Dad, John and Jen, the Parr, Houston-Miller, Everitt-Bossmann and Tominey families, Vinay and Ren, Dave and Dawn, Woody and Glynis, Helen and Tony, Simone, Quinn and Amy Harrington, ChristofLeim, Frank Livadaros, the Barnes, Ellis, Johnston, Legerton and Maynard comrades-in-arms and their contributions to the next generation of rock.

T HERE were two very good reasons for writing this book. The first is that, unless youve had both ears permanently blocked for the last five years, youve heard Queens Of The Stone Age. Even if, in fact, youve never heard of them.

This is because the Queens are one of those rare bands who show up every few years and have a couple of respectable hits in their early careers, but are a bit too left-field, or have too silly a name, or are just too damn difficult to make an immediate splash, and so a few years pass before most people know who they are.

In the interim a period of critical but not commercial popularity, perhaps, or an era in which they tour and tour until the point of exhaustion a whole new musical movement arises, one based on the template they established early on. This is the case with Queens Of The Stone Age, who inspired a whole desert-rock (or stoner-rock) movement without ever laying claim to the title or its origination. In fact, frontman Josh Homme and his co-conspirators shy away from the genre labels, claiming (rightly) that such a tag would be limiting. But theres no denying that the music they recorded in their early years when Homme and some of the others were in a band called Kyuss kick-started a load of bong-toting, sand-dune-raised bands into life.

Which leads me to the second reason for writing the book youre now holding. The story of Kyuss (which rhymes with pious) is one of rocks great untold stories. Relatively few people outside California know who they were, or what they did, even though in 1993 they enjoyed maximum exposure by going on tour with Metallica. Their music was, at its best, so breathtakingly expansive that it will take years for its influence to fully settle. In writing the story of Queens Of The Stone Age, one of the most exciting new bands on the planet, Ive tackled the short, sweet and fiery life of Kyuss too, as the two are inseparable and do not exist without each other. I hope this is a fitting tribute.

For those who are counting, much of the information in this book is based on interviews I personally conducted with Nick Oliveri, Brant Bjork and many other QOTSA and related personnel between 2001 and 2005, most of which are previously unpublished. Enjoy it, and keep an open mind. As Josh says, The music is for you and us, but the way we do it is for us and well play better and be around longer if we do it that way.