Still fueling the Queens of the Stone Age ship since 1996, Josh Homme’s songwriting, production, and musicianship have stretched far beyond the QOTSA box.
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Starting to write and make music at 14, Homme formed the stoner rock band Kyuss as a teen in the late 1980s and helped craft the desert rock sound in California. Homme later led a collective of artists on The Desert Sessions, along with Eagles of Death Metal, and his Them Crooked Vultures troika with Dave Grohl and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, among other projects.
[RELATED: Behind the Band Name: Queens of the Stone Age]
As a writer, musician, vocalist, and producer for more than three decades, Homme has collaborated with Paul McCartney (on his 2021 album McCartney III Reimagined) and secretly penned an entire Iggy Pop album, along with producing The Strokes, Run the Jewels, Arctic Monkeys, and Royal Blood, and other collaborations with Trent Reznor, PJ Harvey, and more.
Throughout his expansive songbook, Homme has remained one of the most virile and voracious songwriters. Here’s a look at three songs the desert rocker wrote for other artists since the early ’00s.
1. “I’ll Be Anything You Want,” Melissa Auf der Maur (2004)
Written by Josh Homme and Melissa Auf der Maur
After playing bass in Hole and Smashing Pumpkins, Melissa Auf de Maur started working on her debut solo album, a collection of songs she had written over a decade. “After I left the Pumpkins, I wanted to start over from scratch,” said Auf der Maur in 2004. “I tried to return to this state of being a 20-year-old who was writing music for the first time.”
The 12 tracks on Auf der Maur fleshed out with collaborations from fellow Canadian musician Steve Durand, along with Homme, who co-wrote the tracks “Overpower Thee” with producer Chris Gross and “I’ll Be Anything You Want” with Auf der Maur.
The album also features musical contributions from Auf der Maur’s former bandmates, Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson and Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha, along with Homme’s former Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork, and the late Mark Lanegan on bass and backing vocals.
Someday I have to say
I’ll be with you.
We’ll share a dance, a romance,
A little dinner for two.
You’ll be mine,
I’m yours – that’s fine.
Everything we ever dreamed of baby
Is ours tonight.
2. “Gardenia,” Iggy Pop (2016)
Written by Josh Homme, Iggy Pop, and Dean Fertita
Recorded in secrecy, Iggy Pop‘s 17th album, Post Pop Depression, was entirely co-written by Homme and the punk legend; a handful of tracks were also co-penned along with Homme’s QOTSA bandmate Dean Fertita.
Lead single “Gardenia” followed the story of a brief love affair Pop had, linked to the late Beat writer Allen Ginsberg.
“‘Gardenia’ was a very tall very black very strong young woman who liked junk and she lived in San Francisco, and I met her during one of my tours,” revealed Pop in an interview with Thurston Moore in 2016. “She dressed shabbily but she was a physically impressive alien presence not totally unlike Angelfood McSpade in the Robert Crumb comics. She went to the gig with me in North Beach and Allen Ginsberg came.”
Pop continued, “She wore a little tiny very cheap polyester babydoll dress and this was a very large woman. She was over six feet—big powerful limbs and devil eyes. Ginsberg went crazy, and she wore Gardenia in her hair to the gig, and he was just ogling at her all night. … He was fascinated with her. I was quite poor at the time. After the gig, I stayed in a cheap motel and I took her back with me, but that particular night I gave it all to the audience. This happens a lot with me.”
Alone in the cheapo motel
By the highway to hell
America’s greatest living poet
Was ogling you all night
You should be wearing the finest gown
But here you are now
Gas, food, lodging, poverty, misery
And gardenia
You could be burned at the stake
For all your mistakes, mistakes, mistakes
3. “John Wayne,” Lady Gaga (2016)
Written by Josh Homme, Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, and BloodPop (Michael Tucker)
On the more Americana-swayed “John Wayne,” Lady Gaga is dreaming of a “real man”—I crave a real wild man / I’m strung out on John Wayne—like the legendary Western actor.
For her fifth album, Joanne, Gaga’s longtime collaborator and producer Mark Ronson invited Homme to play guitar on the track. Homme also ended up contributing drums on the album, co-producing one song and co-writing two, including the opening “Diamond Heart” and the aforementioned song about The Duke.
[RELATED: Queens of the Stone Age Collection Re-releasing on Vinyl]
The album, which also features songs co-written by Ronson and Father John Misty (Josh Tillman), was named after Gaga’s father’s sister, her aunt Joanne Germanotta, who died from Lupus at 19 years old. Gaga’s middle name is also Joanne.
3 a.m., Mustang speedin’
Two lovers, headed for a dead end
Too fast, hold tight, he laughs
Runnin’ through the red lights
Hollerin’ over, rubber spinnin’
Big swig, toss another beer can
Too lit, tonight, prayin’ on the moonlight
Every John is just the same
I’m sick of their city games
I crave a real wild man
I’m strung out on John Wayne
Photo: Pedro Gomes / Getty Images
