Entertainment
How an ancient place of death made Josh Homme feel alive
Josh Homme sips a Modelo the other night as he sits amid the vibey greenery behind Brain Dead Studios on Fairfax Avenue. Inside the movie theater, a small crowd including several of Homme’s friends and family members is watching “Alive in the Catacombs,” a black-and-white short film that documents an acoustic gig Homme’s rock band, Queens of the Stone Age, played last July in the Paris Catacombs, where the remains of an estimated 6 million people are stored beneath the streets of the French capital. Back here on the patio, the 52-year-old singer and guitarist is musing about how audiences are likely to react.
“I’m so proud of the film because it’s either ‘I hate it’ or ‘Holy s—, that was intense,’” he says. “It’s nothing in between.”
The inspiration for “Alive in the Catacombs,” which comes accompanied by a behind-the-scenes documentary (and a five-song EP due Friday), stretches back two decades to a trip to Paris when a long line stymied Homme’s attempt to visit the historical site. Yet he sees a certain poetry in the fact that the show — with radically stripped-down renditions of tunes like “Villains of Circumstance” and “Suture Up Your Future” — came together only as he found himself in a health crisis that forced Queens to postpone the remaining dates of its 2024 tour. With Homme having recovered from cancer, the band will return to the road this week for its first shows in nearly a year.
How arduous was it to convince the Parisian officials to let you shoot in the catacombs?
It was a f— nightmare. There’s a national attitude that’s pervasive in France where you ask a question and the first reaction is, “Ask him over there.” The runaround, as we would call it. We received the runaround for many years.
Are you attracted to spooky spots in general?
I love when music is scary. I recall hearing the Doors as a young boy and being like, “Whoa.” And they’re so consistently terrifying — I’ve always been obsessed with that. My vision of Queens, when it’s perfect, is: There’s a hill with the sun behind it, and this crippled army of minstrels comes over the horizon. The townspeople go, “S—, grab the kids.” When we sound like that, we’re at our best.
What’s a place in L.A. that might be comparable to the catacombs?
There are some Steinbeck-y hobo hotels. And in the right light the Hollywood Forever cemetery has a certain ominous beauty. But that feels too simple. I grew up working on a tree farm, and there’s something about the uniformity of a tree farm that I find terrifying. Further out, the oil fields of Kern County are like dinosaur relics — scabs on the surface of the earth.
Seems reasonable to ask why someone in such perilous physical shape would want to spend time in a place defined by death.
Having worked on this for the better part of 20 years, the chances that when it finally occurs, I would be dealing with the very issue that is why it exists — I mean, the chances are almost zero. That plays into my romantic side, and I don’t see the value in running hypotheticals about why it’s happening. I’d rather hold it close and say, “I’m supposed to be here,” accept that and feel empowered by it. There were a lot of people who love me that were saying I shouldn’t do this. And I respect that. But it does ignore the point — like, how many signs do you need?
I saw the behind-the-scenes film —
I watched it once, and I can never watch it again. I see how medicated I was. I know that vulnerable is the way to go, but I don’t do a lot of sorting through things in hindsight — it makes me uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable with the documentary.
Why put it out?
Because that’s what this is. I was uncomfortable in the catacombs too.
You don’t play guitar in the movie. Did it feel natural for you to sing without holding one?
It didn’t in earlier years, but now it’s as natural as anything else. I’m sort of slowly falling out of love with the guitar. I’ll just use any instrument. I don’t play them all well, but it doesn’t really matter — it’s whatever will get the idea across.
Who were some of your models for the kind of singing you’re doing?
I’ve always loved [Jim] Morrison and his poetry. Sometimes the music isn’t great in the Doors, but it’s all in support of someone that I do believe is a true poet. The words are the strongest part of that band.
Your crooning made me want to hear you do an album of standards.
I was talking about this with my old man today. He’s like, “You’re not gonna retire,” and I was like, “Oh, yes, I am — I’m going to Melvyn’s in Palm Springs to be like [sings], ‘Fly me to the moon…’”
You grew up in Palm Desert. This might be an underappreciated aspect of your lineage.
KDES 104.7, baby. The DJ would be like, “Are you by the pool? Well, you should be.” Very Robert Evans.
Are there Queens songs you knew wouldn’t work in the catacombs?
We didn’t think of it that way. The people in there, they didn’t choose to be there, so what would they want to hear? I chose things about family, acceptance, the difficulties in life and the way you feel the moment they’re revealed — and the way you feel the moment they’re over. My first thought was: How do I emotionally get on my knees and do the very best I can to present something that these people have been longing for? It felt very religious.
Do you believe in God?
I believe in God, but God is everything I can’t understand.
Do you think there’s an afterlife?
I believe there’s a return to something. Is it like, “Oh my God, Rodney Dangerfield!”? That’s not what I believe. But the energy that keeps you and I alive, it can’t simply disappear. You must just go home to the big ball somewhere.
Queens of the Stone Age: Michael Shuman, from left, Troy Van Leeuwen, Josh Homme, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore.
(Andreas Neumann)
Last time you and I spoke, you told me you you’d learned to pursue your art with less of the reckless abandon of your youth. I wondered how that figured into your decision to call off shows last year after Paris.
By the time we walked down the steps into the catacombs, we all knew in the band that it was over. The morning we were supposed to play Venice [a few days before the Paris gig], I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I was like, “Take me to the hospital.” But I realized there was nothing that could happen for me there. I said, “Bathroom?” and I had them pull the car up and we left.
Does that seem irresponsible in retrospect?
No, because they didn’t know what was going on and they didn’t have the ability to know. I was like, “I made a mistake — I should have just kept going.” We went to the next show in Milan because Paris was so close. You work on something for all these years, and now you can almost see it. You’re gonna turn around because it’s hard? You can’t go two more hours? My old man says, “Quitting on yourself is hardest the first time, and it’s easy every time after that.”
Whoa.
Is that wrong? That’s the guy that brought me up, and he’s proud to be here tonight. So did I make a mistake or not? I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d walked away.
You’ve been reluctant to get too specific about your illness.
It doesn’t matter. Who cares? It was hard and it was dangerous. Big f— deal.
Queens is about to get back onstage.
We’re gonna finish what we started. I thought I was gonna be out of commission for 18 months or two years — that’s what I was told.
How’d you take that?
I wasn’t looking for high-fives. But it ended up being seven months. I’ve changed so many things, and I feel so good.
Are you writing songs?
Lots. The great part about these physically or mentally dangerous situations is that now I feel super-alive and ready to go. I spent a lot of months bedridden, and now that I’m not, I’m very much like a rodeo bull. Not the rider — the bull. When you open that gate, I will destroy.
Entertainment
Bob Spitz proves the Rolling Stones are rock’s greatest band in magnificent new biography
By early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a blustery, snowy night that February, the Rolling Stones’ classic early lineup took the stage for one of the first times, dazzling the audience with ferocious renditions of blues standards like Muddy Waters’ “I Want to Be Loved” and Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.”
Multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the band’s founder and leader, synchronized guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a distinctive slashing and stinging style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group’s newest member, a jazz aficionado and an accomplished percussionist, propelled the music forward with a rock-solid beat.
Anchoring the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was recruited more for his spare VOX AC30 amp that the guitarists could plug into than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved a strong and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would go on to form one of rock’s most decorated rhythm sections.
Ian Stewart’s energetic boogie-woogie piano style rounded out the sound. Months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked him out of the band for being “ugly,” although Stewart continued to record, tour and serve as the band’s road manager until his death in 1985.
This April 8, 1964, file photo shows the Rolling Stones during a rehearsal. The members, from left, are Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar.
(Associated Press)
Fronting the group was Mick Jagger. Channeling the music like a crazed shaman, Jagger shimmied and sashayed, owning the stage like few lead singers have before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd in a frenzy. Although only 30 people had made it to the gig because of the treacherous weather conditions, the hotel’s booker had seen enough: He offered the Stones a regular gig.
“The Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own… It was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising,” writes Bob Spitz in “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” his magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
Spitz, the author of strong biographies on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public’s consciousness for more than six decades. It’s all here: The Stones’ evolution from a blues cover band to artistic rival of the Beatles; the musical peaks — “Aftermath,” “Let It Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street” as well as misfires like “Dirty Work”; Keith’s descent into a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band; the death of the ‘60s at the ill-fated Altamont free concert; Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses; the breakups, makeups and crackups; and perhaps most important, the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards at the center of it all.
Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band’s story a deep richness and poignancy.
Take “Satisfaction,” the Stones’ 1965 classic and first U.S. chart topper. The oft-told story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed the guitar that was next to his bed, and recorded the iconic riff and the phrase “I can’t get no … satisfaction” on a cassette recorder in his Clearwater, Fla., hotel room before falling back asleep. But as Spitz notes, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That is until Stewart purchased a fuzz box for Richards a few days later, which gave the tune a raunchier sound that perfectly matched Jagger’s lyrics of frustration and alienation. A classic was born.
Piercing the Stones mythology
Spitz’s deep reporting often pierces the mythology surrounding the band. Contrary to the popular belief of many fans, for instance, Jones bears much of the responsibility for the rift with his bandmates and his tragic demise.
The most musically adventurous member of the group — he plays sitar on “Paint It Black” and dulcimer on “Lady Jane” — Jones wasn’t a songwriter. That stoked his jealousies and insecurities, along with frontman Jagger stealing the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that’s why she left him for Richards. Over time, Jones made fewer contributions in the studio and onstage, becoming a catatonic drug casualty. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969 but would have been justified doing so a couple years earlier. He drowned in his pool less than a month later.
Author Bob Spitz
(Elena Seibert)
Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized the making of “Exile on Main Street” in the stifling, dingy basement of Richards’ rented Villa Nellcôte in the South of France, where the Stones had decamped to avoid British taxes. In this telling, Richards, deep in the throes of heroin addiction, somehow managed to come up with one indelible riff after another built around his signature open G tuning — taught to him by Ry Cooder — leading the band to create one of the best albums in rock history. That’s not entirely accurate, according to Spitz.
Yes, Richards came up with the licks for “Rocks Off,” “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice.” But it’s equally true that a strung-out Richards missed myriad recording sessions, invited dealers, hangers-on and other distractions to Nellcôte, and repeatedly failed to turn up to write with Jagger. Far from completing the album in the druggy haze of a French basement, the band spent six months on overdubs at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger contributed many of his vocals.
Beatles vs. Stones
One of the more interesting themes Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and Stones, with the Fab Four mostly overshadowing them — until they didn’t.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man” and gave it to the Stones, whose 1963 rendition, with Jones on slide guitar, became the group’s first UK Top 20 hit. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin penning their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles came to the U.S. for the first time, making television history with their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and playing Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones kicked off their inaugural American tour at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. In 1967, the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a psychedelic masterpiece. The Stones responded with “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” a psychedelic mess.
The Rolling Stones: The Biography cover
As the Beatles began to splinter, Spitz writes, the Stones sharpened their focus. The band released “Beggars Banquet” in late 1968 and “Let It Bleed” the following year, albums every bit as innovative and visionary as “The White Album” and “Abbey Road.” For the first time, the two groups stood as equals.
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the Stones kept rolling. With Jones replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor — whose fluid, melodic style served as a tasty foil to Richards — they produced what many consider their finest works, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.” More impressively, the band, with Taylor’s successor, Ronnie Wood, has continued to dazzle audiences with incendiary live shows, touring as recently as 2024 behind the late-career triumph “Hackney Diamonds.” The Beatles, by contrast, retired from the road in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.
Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.
Like most of the band’s biographers, Spitz gives short shrift to the post-“Exile” period after 1972. He curtly dismisses 2005’s strong “A Bigger Bang” and 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome,” a back-to-basics album of blues covers, as “adequate endeavors that signaled a band living on borrowed time.” That critique is both off target and under-developed. Spitz ignores the band’s legendary live album, “Brussels Affair,” recorded in 1973, or why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.
These are small quibbles. Spitz has written a book worthy of its 704-page length; another 50 or so pages covering the later years would have made it even stronger. To quote the Rolling Stones: “I know it’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do.”
Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.
‘4’, the opening track on Richard D James’ (Aphex Twin) self titled 1996 album is a piece of music that beautifully balances the chaotic with the serene, the oppressive and the freeing. It’s a trick that James has pulled off multiple times throughout his career and it is a huge part of what makes him such an iconic and influential artist. Many people have laid the “next Aphex Twin” label on musicians who do things slightly different and when you actually hear their music you realise that, once again, the label is flawed and applied with a lazy attitude. Why mention this? Well, it turns out we’ve been looking for James’ heir apparent in the wrong artform. We’ve so zoned in on music that we’ve not noticed that another Celtic son of Cornwall is rewriting an art form with that highwire balancing act between chaos and beauty. That artist is writer, director and composer Mark Jenkin who over his last two feature films has announced himself as an idiosyncratic voice who is creating his very own language within the world of cinema. Jenkin’s films are often centred around coastal towns or islands and whilst they are experimental or even unsettling, there is always a big heart at the centre of the narrative. A heart that cares about family, tradition, culture, and the pull of ‘home’. Even during the horror of 2022’s brilliant Enys Men you were anchored by the vulnerability and determination of its main protagonist.
This month sees the release of Jenkin’s latest feature film, Rose of Nevada, which is set in a fractured and diminished Cornish coastal town. One day the fishing boat of the film’s title arrives back in harbour after being missing for thirty years. The boat is unoccupied. And frankly that is all the information you are going to get because to discuss any more plot would be unfair on you and disrespectful to Jenkin and the team behind the film. You the viewer should be the one who decides what it is about because thematically there are so many wonderful threads to pull on. This writer’s opinions on what it is about have ranged from a theme of sacrifice for the good of a community to the conflict within when part of you wants to run away from your roots whilst the other half longs to stay and be a lifelong part of its tapestry. Is it about Brexit? Could be. Is it about our own relationships with time and our curation of memory? Could be. Is it about both the positives and negatives of nostalgia? Could be. As a side note, anyone in their mid-40s, like me, who came of age in the 1990s will certainly find moments of warm recognition. Is the film about ghosts and how they haunt families? Could be…I think you get the point.
The elements that make the film so well balanced between chaos and calm are many. It is there in the differing performances between the brilliant two lead actors George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is there in the sound design which fluctuates from being unbearably harsh and metallic, to lulling and warm. It is there in the editing where short, sharp close ups on seemingly unimportant factors are counterbalanced with shots that are held for just that little bit too long. For a film set around the sea, it is apt that it can make you feel like you’re rolling on a stomach churning storm one minute, or a calming low tide the next. Dialogue can be front and centre or blurred and buried under static. One shot is bathed in harsh sunlight whilst the next can be drowned in interior shadows.
Rose of Nevada is Mark Jenkin’s most ambitious film to date yet he has not lost a single iota of innovation, singularity of vision or his gift for telling the most human of stories. It is a film that will tell you different things each time you see it and whilst there are moments that can confuse or beguile, there is so much empathy and love that it can leave you crying tears of emotional understanding. It is chaotic. It is beautiful. It is life……
Rose of Nevada is released on the 24th April.
Mark Jenkin Instagram | Threads
Released through the BFI – Instagram | Facebook
Review by Simon Tucker
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