You said about the new record that “You’ve exhausted all your lateral movement” – so where is the movement now, at the end of this cycle?
The most uncomfortable thing of all is to express your own happiness if you’re in Queens of The Stone Age. (laughs) I always think ‘never get in the way of your own fun,’ but it’s hard to write music about fun. Even the word ‘fun,’ you’re just like shuuuut up, you know? But by the same token, we have a great time. So it’s weird to sort of reconcile the two things where you play it dark, but you keep it light. It screeches it to a weird halt, which is fine. Which is great. The record needed those moments of something that sonically feels like it’s moving up instead of scraping the barrel. But those songs were all written in one phase, and as the new songs started coming forward it was like ‘well, we should finish this phase before we let the new phase come in.’
From a creative standpoint, do you get antsy about that kind of scheduling structure?
I think we’re all so itchy to go back into the studio, in particular because Jon only performed on one song, and we kind of see our future in Jon. His abilities have not been mined in any way, in that there’s so much he can do that takes us into such a weird and beautifully off-kilter position for us. So I think there’s a definite urge to jump back in the studio. I think the hardest part is going to be to regroup and learn how to be home for a second. Cause we really haven’t been home.
When people first heard that Jon was a part of the band, the first thought was of these crazy polyrhythmic blizzards from The Mars Volta, but his first recorded steps with the band were small. So everyone’s really excited to see what comes next.
That’s the thing with someone like Jon, who can bring everything to the table. And some drummers can be so kitchen sink about everything that you almost don’t know what you’re hearing. For me it’s much more difficult… if you’re playing with someone, try to ask them to play one note for five minutes and see if they can do it. It’s one of the most impossible things. It’s so difficult, it takes such skill and concentration to be Jaki Liebezeit from Can. He’s not only one of Jon’s favorite drummers, but one of mine as well. He’s gotta be one of the funkiest, best, most groovin’ best drummers possible. Now if you put him up against someone who’s constantly playing, and do the Pepsi challenge with Jaki Liebezeit, with someone that’s always going off and can’t hold back, people will pick Jaki Liebezeit. Nine dentists out of ten will pick Jaki Liebezeit.
Nice. So less can most definitely be more when applying what fits in the moment.
There’s a thing called zero dynamic. If you’re in the studio and there’s a piece of gear, it’s set at zero, and you can dial it down by what they call tenuating. You can take it away, or you can add to it. So you can go either direction. But when you’re in zero, your dynamic can get softer or louder. If you find a really great groove and it’s simple, and you can just hover on that, you can always add more, and you have the room to take something away. and that sort of control over your music is really beautiful. So as I said, I think the fact that you could’ve done more but you controlled yourself and didn’t, that makes itself kind of difficult to emulate, and makes it so beautiful in the first place.
That’s a lesson most bands could use a dose of these days.
I think the notion that you have to showcase your full ability in each song every time, is really a mistake.
It’s insecure.
I suppose so, but I think the truth is that it’s like a drum fill. I personally like a drum fill that doesn’t go (fast beat sound), that doesn’t try to say ‘look how fast I can do it!’ I prefer a drum fill that sounds like an old man falling down stairs, trying to catch itself. So in the space it allows for personality, and kind of an expression instead of ‘look I can do everything!’ – in a panic, needing to explain yourself all in a second.
And I think what’s great about Jon is that he’s a Home Depot of drums. He’s got it all. If you need it, he’s got it on aisle five. But what it does is creates an allowance for us to go from holding it back and creating that tension to going way too far. And I love the possibility of that.
That’s one of the things that originally drew me in, was the trap door element to your music. You don’t know where you’re going to turn one moment to the next. A song like Fun Machine, what you guys have done with that in live performance takes the studio recording to a whole new level.
I think that trap door element is crucial, because you listen with that same excitement as riding a rollercoaster. A rollercoaster doesn’t start by being forty loops in a row so you puke yourself. It takes you on this thing where you need the moments in between, where you’re not doing anything (laughs), in order to value the moments when something occurs. And that sort of patience feels so good. The feeling of patience, lulling someone into a false sense of security so you can open the trap door, and they end up in Shanghai. That notion is so wonderful, that mystery of the music is so wonderful.
One of the great things of this band is we never claim to know better. I definitely know that I don’t know better. I don’t know better for you, I don’t know better for anyone else, I barely know anything to get myself through the day. But I think collectively, our willingness to go ‘ok, let’s just take this chance and let’s follow it instead of making it sit up and beg by overkill’. We’ve gotten to this place now that I really love. As difficult as this last record was, I also really enjoyed that rowboat to Hell. It’s great. I didn’t know we were going to row that far, but that’s what it is.
The sense of surprise and unexpected newness really came into play with Them Crooked Vultures, when you were giving people an entirely new thing that they couldn’t predict at all. Will Them Crooked Vultures fly again someday?
All I know is I know we all want that. I know all four of us, including Alain (Johannes) would love to do something again. And the Vultures is this thing where it needs to surprise us in the band just the way it did last time. And it’ll show up at some point like, ‘It’s time, boys!’ – and it needs to operate under that guise, or it’ll have the stink of desperation on it. It needs to be natural, and we all want it. So we’re just waiting for nature to take it’s course.
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Page 2 photos: Johnny Firecloud
