Josh Homme You are coming out of the bottom of the happiness curve well. This theory concludes that the most depressing age of the human being is 47.2 years: the most unhappy moment of life. The leader of Queens Of The Stone Age just turned 50 and has spent the last few years in detox centers for alcoholism and continued consumption drugs, in law firms and courts for his painful divorce (his ex-wife and he exchanged accusations of physical and emotional violence, with custody of their three children in between) and in medical offices and hospitals, after he was diagnosed with cancer.
Meanwhile, I could watch the inexorable decline of rock like a skyscraper collapsing in slow motion in a movie. Christopher Nolan.
So Josh Homme has reasons to feel like shit.
So when he performs now, as he does tonight in front of the huge crowd at the Mad Cool festival, almost 70,000 people in flowery shirts and eager to be loud, there’s something liberating in the breathy, throbbing noise of his dark rock. Many times sounded fierce and sinister in the past, but he probably never had so many reasons.
But Josh Homme smiles and shakes his cool when the concert begins with his best-known song, ‘No One Knows’. He has been on the subject for more than 20 years now and talks about crossing the desert without hope and drifting in the middle of the ocean between lifeboats dead in the sun and feeling devastated. Now it sounds more loaded with meaning, but he exclaims shortly after: “I’m very happy, what a fucking rich”.