Amp Week 2026: For many guitar players, their first amp is a predictable choice. Maybe it was an affordable Marshall or Fender five-watt combo – or, for those of a certain age, a primal modeler like the iconic Line 6 Spider or Peavey Vypyr.

For a young Josh Homme, who would later make his name in Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age, it was something a bit more obscure – something that would set the scene for the left-field gear picks for which he'd later be known for.

“My first amp proper was an Ampeg VT-40, and I still have it,” he tells Guitar World. “It was so heavy to lift as an 11-year-old.”

Ostensibly a bass amp, the VT-40 was a choice that didn’t necessarily match Homme's instrument as an electric guitar slinger. In fact, he bought a Teisco Del Rey Tulip at the same time as the VT-40, and, in his own words, found that “two wrongs don’t make a right, but 40 wrongs make a weird.”

He’s spoken to GW previously about how the amp, coupled with his exclusive use of the neck pickup, defined his unusual Kyuss guitar tone. It was an unorthodox sound because... well, the gear and the choices behind it were atypical.

Yet it was the amp's aesthetic, more so than anything else, that drew Homme to the Ampeg.

“I knew I wanted something old, because it's such a tactile sensation,” he says. “The knobs on an amplifier mean something. And if they’re not to my taste, it sort of turns me off.

“In Liar Liar, they say, ‘Don't judge a book by its cover. But that's what people with a shitty cover always say,’ right?” he goes on. “Of course, the cover matters. I do this solely by visual, and then sort of just make it into being.”

Later, when Kyuss broke up, and he kick-started life with Queens of the Stone Age, Homme left the amp behind, finding a new, unassuming secret weapon that has since become his first signature amp.

But Peavey wasn’t the first firm to approach him about a collaboration. Homme also revealed to Guitar World that he turned Ampeg down for one particular reason.

Elsewhere, Homme has credited his off-kilter playing style to his ‘oompah oompah’ upbringing, and has explained why he always writes his songs on acoustic guitar first.

“The drama and chaos of Courtney Love and Hole are infamous, but to me it all felt familiar,” writes Melissa Auf der Maur in her newly released memoir and homage to the ’90s, Even the Good Girls Will Cry.

Like all great memoirs, Auf der Maur vividly encapsulates the pivotal moments that saw her transcend from DIY venues in Canada to joining Love and co. in front of 65,000 people at the UK’s Reading Festival in 1994. It all happened mere weeks after the tragic deaths of Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff and Kurt Cobain – and that’s just the first chapter.

“I found comfort in the chaos. My upbringing was the perfect training ground to be in a rock band and immersed in the world of Courtney. Despite how new I was to the band, I fitted right in,” she continues.

Indeed, Auf der Maur's grunge Cinderella story depicts a series of full-circle moments: her encounter with Billy Corgan at a low-lit punk venue in her native Montréal – and her becoming absolutely enthralled with the Smashing Pumpkins' music – led to a recommendation to join Hole, and later, the Pumpkins as their touring bassist, before she plunged into a solo career at the turn of the millennium.

“There's a reason why the introduction to my book, which is the Reading Festival, is [called] ‘Through the Looking Glass,’” Auf der Maur tells Bass Player, as she dials in from a room lined with photos – vignettes from those heady days.

“It was David Lynchian, Alice in Wonderland… I just stepped into another dimension. I went from a tiny town to a global stage with grief and chaos and death and everything.”

In the book, you describe feeling chosen by the bass. What was it about the instrument – its physicality and frequency – that felt like destiny rather than a practical decision?

When I was awarded Female Bass Player of the Year by Gibson, in the limo ride on the way [there], I started writing my acceptance speech, and that's when I came up with [the idea that] the bass is the mother of all instruments. So in my acceptance speech, I described the bass as the glue and the connector.

The bass is the connector that connects the singer to the drummer, to the audience, to the rhythm, and to the melodies, all at the same time… The place in which the bass sits in any music, not just rock music, but especially dance music or even jazz, the bass brings you on a different kind of journey. It brings you on a feeling journey. You fucking feel the bass.

Geddy Lee has a TV show called Are Bass Players Human Too? [and] he came to Hudson [New York, where Auf der Maur currently lives]. At the end of the visit, I was like, well, ‘Bass is so easy. That's why I picked it up.’ And he looked at me, he's like, ‘Well, that's a secret. Don't tell anyone.’ But he also said, ‘Bass isn't easy for everybody.’

I then realized, even during all my years in Hole, when it was clear that I was so young and had only played six concerts in my life, I played the bass, and didn’t make a mistake. When I joined the band, I only had five days to rehearse with them, and people say, like, ‘How did that happen?’ I was like, ‘I don't know. It was easy.’ So I feel my way through a song.

What did bass playing give you that the other art forms didn’t?

It entirely connects me to a deep way of feeling human connection, because the best of bass is when you're playing with a drummer and playing with a band and playing in front of an audience – that is the magic.

Me alone in a room with a bass; it means absolutely nothing to me. It does not please me nor make me feel anything. That’s my relationship to the instrument – it’s to connect with human beings.

How did you come across your first bass?

I had borrowed basses from older men. I was a DJ, a cassette DJ, at the local dive bar where all the older guy musicians worked with me. And I started plugging into their amps with their instruments.

Then, one day, the guys just said, ‘Hey, it’s time to get your own bass. You're turning 21, you've been borrowing all this time. Let's go find you a bass.’ And so they brought me to this second-hand shop. We walked into this giant music room. It just called me. She had the same color as my hair.

I said, ‘What about this? Is this a good one?’ They're like, ‘Oh yeah, you know, vintage Squier Precision, made in Japan, high quality…’ And then I said, ‘Great, my father, I'll just tell him it's my birthday present.’

My father [Canadian journalist and politician Nick Auf der Maur], who is a very adventurous, courageous, weird person, was having lunch, and I said, ‘Can I have $500 for this bass for my birthday? I'm turning 21.’ That was the bass I played in Hole until I was sponsored by Fender.

You joined Hole amidst unimaginable grief. How did you manage to adapt to the circumstances?

A switch flipped, and I was just the exact same person, but in a completely different environment. I was not raised in a suburban, boring family. I was raised by radical people who did radical things.

When I saw the Smashing Pumpkins and Hole play in 1991, when I worked as a ticket girl, and I saw both of them play in front of 20 people, I knew what was happening.

The world was changing, and something huge and magical was happening for my generation. I picked up the bass because I wanted to be part of the movement of radical noise-making for my generation. So I felt at home. I'm like, this is where I belong.

I was not a drug addict [but I was] watching what money and fame did to all these fragile people who were already, for the most part, coming from broken families and didn't have love and support, so their band and their community and their generation and the stage and the audience were their only family. I adapted very quickly because I understood what was happening.

What gear were you using during that time?

I only ever played the same thing, an [Ampeg] SVT tube amp – with the drive knob, not without. I had been playing a vintage one that was one of the boys' back home. I only ever borrowed until I joined Hole, so I knew what I wanted to buy when they bought me my amp – it's an SVT Pro tube head and SVT cabinet. My Fender Precision, Boss tuner pedal… that is it.

I didn’t use any distortion until later, when SansAmp made these cool distortion pedals. I also love phaser and chorus. I didn’t use anything else. [More recently] Geddy gave me all of his [signature] pedals, so I have some Geddy Lee pedals.

How did your sense of rhythm evolve once you locked in with Hole drummer Patty Schemel?

Patty and I played really well together. We [even] had a little side project when Courtney was becoming a Hollywood movie star – it was called Constant Comment. It was harder to adjust to [Smashing Pumpkins’ drummer] Jimmy Chamberlin. Me and Patty were easy.

By the time I was playing with the Pumpkins, it was a much more complicated catalog with a very complex drummer. Jimmy is a jazz-prog drummer. He's crazy cool. The sound of the Pumpkins is so Jimmy. So that was an interesting adaptation because Jimmy, like jazz drummers, does not play to a click. Patty's actually very tight. She's very, very rhythmically solid. Jimmy is like a wild animal.

It's like you're following this wild creature through two-hour sets of changing songs every setlist, and it took so long for me to figure out, ‘How do I keep up with this dynamic band?’ Because Jimmy is also following Billy, and Billy speeds up, and it's like this weird machine.

But when I did Billy's podcast [recently], I learned something about myself musically that I've never learned before. He told me about my specific pocket, which I knew nothing about. I'm on top of the beat. I’m ahead. I'll take it as a compliment, because [Led Zeppelin’s] John Paul Jones and [John] Bonham, who are one of the most famous rhythm sections, Bonham is behind, and Jones is above. I guess I naturally sit on top of the drums.

What are your memories of writing the bassline for Celebrity Skin? It’s unusual for a bassline to follow the vocal melody.

I don't remember anything. I'm very, very proud of my bass playing on that album, because I had so much time, because some of those songs, we'd be playing for hours and hours and hours.

You just play for Courtney to find her lyrics. She's someone who needs to be screaming to find the whole song for like 20 hours, so as a rhythm section, you're sitting there just playing in a loop over and over and over. So I had a lot of time to find melodic licks.

We were brought to see a Fleetwood Mac rehearsal with the producer, Michael Beinhorn [renowned producer who worked with the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soundgarden, Hole, and Ozzy Osbourne]. I was not a Fleetwood Mac fan because I'm more of a heavy, visceral rock fan, but I recognized being in that room watching the drums and bass, [their tracks] could be seen as simple, airy songs, but this is not simple.

What they are doing, the complexity of it when you step back, when you do a melodic line, when you open it up, when you push it… Through just one sitting and watching that rhythm section, it opened my mind to the power of less is more, but also [that] minimal changes make huge impacts on a song.

Billy Corgan famously recommended you to Courtney, and you later joined the Pumpkins. I'm curious how your dynamic with him changed across all these chapters of your life…

Our bond started when we discovered we were both born on St Patrick's Day. We're both pretty tripped-out hippie people that get a little romantic and convoluted and [are all] about the stars and destiny and astrology… He's a trip of a guy, and I am a trip of a girl, I guess, and so I think our relationship reflects this ebb and flow. Sometimes he feels like a soulmate, and then sometimes he's a total stranger.

What did you learn from him about bass playing?

I learned how to be an incredible bass player. Learning that catalog and playing 183 shows with those incredible players totally defined me as a bass player. I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my God… I mean, it changed my level of musicianship forever and opened my repertoire of understanding what my hands can do.

My solo records most certainly were expanded by having to learn that catalog and play it with them. So I always say the Pumpkins was my “Master’s in Music”… just phenomenal music training.

How did that impact on your solo career?

Living in the shadow of my grunge parents, Courtney and Billy, who made me, who found me out of nowhere… it was a complex and exhausting shadow to come out from under.

I made those solo records myself for myself, even though I put one out on Capitol [Records] and one on Roadrunner [Records]. I paid for them myself, because I was not going to let other motherfucking people tell me who I am or what I'm going to do and be.

It was done in protective force fields of independence so that I could explore, authentically, what it is to be me, alone, as the captain of the ship. So those two albums were completely self-exploration.

Especially my first record, being able to work with [Queens of the Stone Age’s] Josh Homme and [record producer] Chris Goss… I got to invite the people I admired the most. John Stanier from Helmet, one of my favorite drummers ever… having my favorite drummers play on my solo record was pretty much the coolest thing a bass player could ever do.

From its title to its content, your book, and, by extension, your career, have a feminist overtone. Did you feel a strong sense of responsibility in that respect when you were playing in Hole and Smashing Pumpkins?

The people from the record industry realized that the money is with the women, the money is with the girl fans. They turned the whole music industry, the pop music industry, into a female-led [industry].

Billie Eilish, I think, is a woman you couldn't even invent in the ’90s, because she's a product of a new world where, actually, women can be empowered and protected from a horrible system. She's a product of a new world, of a very special kind of world that didn't exist for women [before].

My mother, which I write about in the book, she wanted to change the way women were. She raised me, saying over and over, ‘No man should ever define a woman. You have to be your own person. Do not be defined by a man.’ So that's how I was raised, and that's what I did.

I felt a responsibility to continue what my mother had started. I just saw myself as a continuation of new feminism, and it still has to happen right now. I got very nervous in the past 10-20 years watching, well, rock music dying. So then, visceral, strong women kind of died and went more into pop.

It was a rare moment in the ’90s where women were being given a bridge into a very male form of expression, and it was so fucking powerful. [Nowadays] there's Picture Parlour, Wet Leg… of course, there are tons of women playing guitar. Thank God. But there was a dead moment there, between this and that, there weren’t any. When I was putting out my solo records, all of a sudden, I was the only woman on the bill again.

There’s this beautiful description in your book of the bathroom stall at Reading Festival as a liminal space – transitioning pre-fame Melissa into a public-facing bass icon. Looking back at that life-changing moment now, what would you tell 22-year-old Melissa?

I would tell her that she's doing it all right. It is her who has the answer. No-one in the future outside of her has the answer. The greatest thing I learned writing this book is that I already knew what I was and who I wanted to be.

I had all the tools, and I began to realize that my 22-year-old self was a teacher to me now. So I would basically tell her fucking follow your wildest dreams, listen to the craziest ideas you have in your head, and trust yourself.

I've already been everywhere in my life and back, and I'm just trying to ride the right wave to have meaningful experiences and share something of my perspective and my love of life with other people so that I can have good energy in my lifetime.

• Melissa Auf der Maur's memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir, is out now.

There’s something sexy about secrets, and Josh Homme knows that. While he was down-tuning a whole genre into existence with Kyuss, making waves with Queens of the Stone Age, or crafting one of the best supergroup records of all time with Them Crooked Vultures, he was pretty tight-lipped about the gear he uses.

But during an interview with Mark Ronson for Apple TV in 2021, he disclosed that his “secret weapon” was a rather unassuming Peavey Decade combo amp. Since then, the mask has begun to slip, punctuated by a signature version of the 10-watt, solid state workhorse – the first time he’s ventured into the world of signature amps.

Outside of his go-to Maestro Parametric Filter, Homme steers clear of pedal chat. But there’s comfort in knowing that his greatest gear secret is that, when it comes to amplifiers, pretty much anything goes – as long as you drive it hard enough.

Homme still wants to retain some mystique. After all, the greatest journeys through the Wild West of gear are the ones strewn with detours, mistakes and happy accidents. Only then can a player find their true self.

You used to play your gear cards close to your chest. What changed?

It feels like talking over your art project in a classroom – it's exciting to break it apart and see how the sausage is made. I used to have a couple dummy pedals on stage behind my amps, because people would always come up and try to sneak photos.

I think those secrets are what's cool about this. There’s a sound that sounds just like you. It takes a minute to figure out what that is, and that journey is truly joyous to take. Like everyone else, I love knowing what Angus Young is doing – but it’s also fun to make it a bit of a scavenger hunt for people, so they don't miss the good stuff along the way.

Nobody here is inventing the wheel. You're really just saying, “I made a wheel. Do you want to roll with me?” And that’s what's so wonderful about this: you get to explore, and oftentimes the mistakes you make end up being the secret sauce.

Why choose the moment with Mark Ronson to give the Peavey Decade game away?

I don't know what it was about that day, but I thought, “If I keep it a secret forever, no-one will understand where I’m coming from.”

When did Peavey come into your life?

I’m from a smaller town that was about 30,000 people when I was a kid, over a really vast expanse of land. But one thing was constant: in the States, there's always a little music store, and Peavey always did a really good job of making sure that's the store they were in. Peavey was the PA at your mom's wedding, the gear that people were playing in church.

Peavey was always reliable, a little bit bombproof. You could drop it off the back of your truck and not feel that you've destroyed it. It would still plug in and play, and, and it wasn't expensive. It was something that every man, woman and child could scrape up the dough to get.

Was your first amp a Peavey?

My first amp proper was an Ampeg VT-40 – I still have it. It was so heavy to lift as an 11-year-old! But I wanted an amp, and I knew I wanted something old, because it’s such a tactile sensation. The knobs on an amplifier mean something. If they’re not to my taste, it sort of turns me off.

In Liar Liar they say “Don't judge a book by its cover. But that’s what people with a shitty cover always say!” Of course the cover matters. I do this solely by vision, and then sort of make it into being. The truth is you can make anything sound like you. I’ve picked amps, guitars, pedals, and outboard gear solely because of the knobs and things like that, without any regard to if it plays well.

What about your first guitar?

One of the first electrics was a Teisco Del Rey [Tulip] flower guitar, which I bought with the VT-40. It was instant Kinks. As I got older, I realized that the Japanese – because of the post-World War II economy – couldn’t get the best stuff, so they had shitty beginnings. But they did the best they could. It’s really well-made shit, and it creates this unforgettable sound.

I went through this phase of buying Japanese guitars; they were cheap, so it was an easy experiment. Then I discovered Tempo’s high-end guitars. I started exploring cool combinations of three and five pickups, and switches that are like a little light switch instead of a pickup selector; hearing what that does to the phase. They had the skinniest tones ever.

Later, having an opportunity to work with people like Echo Park and Motor Ave, I could ask for things. I’ve been fucking with out-of-phase things a lot in the last 10 years, because then you have multiple amp sounds out of one guitar in just a couple switches. You can do it with your pinky while you’re playing. I always respected Hendrix for doing that.

What were some of your early lessons about gear?

As teenagers, the only rule was that if you sounded like someone else, people gave you shit – and rightfully so. When you're young, you wear your influences on your sleeve pretty heavily. You don’t know if that’s right or wrong. Until you experience a penalty for doing that, you progress in that direction.

In early Kyuss we drank too much of the Misfits Kool-Aid. We got a little shit for it, but I walked away from that taking the right influence from Black Flag, which is that you I can love something and be influenced by it without having to sound that way. When I was 16 I felt like there was some combination of sounds that sounded like how I felt. I needed to look only for that thing.

I couldn’t afford a tuner, so I started experimenting with detuning guitars, because it was the one thing I did not see out there at that time. I’d take the guitar down so it was floppy, then tune it back up a little bit; it was as low as I could go, in C and B. All of a sudden you could feel that.

I guess you’re looking for something that resonates with you. You’re looking for your frequency. Years later I learned that’s the natural order of things. It injected this beautiful philosophy about what it means to play – how you’re actually getting closer to the universe. So gear became the most important thing. It was the right tie pin or the right fucking socks, you know?

That set you down a path…

I bought a 12-channel PA from the ’70s and started playing guitar through that, because I was looking for ways for that C and B tuning to be accepted by an amplifier without it folding on itself.

That’s when I went, “I’ll play through bass cabinets!” You're looking for any way, visually and sonically, to do something that nobody else was doing. Getting shit from people was the best thing that could happen – it made me think, “Never again will anyone ever say I sound like someone else. I’ll find a way.” My goal was that, within three seconds, you know it’s me.

Is that what led you towards atypical gear?

There are so many examples of plugging a Telecaster into a Fender amp, or a Les Paul into a Marshall. There’s a homogenization that leads to sterilization. I call it “unsupply on demand” – what’s in the nothingness between those things? That’s where I should live.

Anything is an amplifier to me. I love playing out of old stereo tuners, old tape machines; anything with a speaker and a jack. Forget quarter-inch. RCA, TT, if I can get in there I will. With a Les Paul and a Marshall I know what’s going to happen there. I figured I’m good; music is about matching your own evolution.

It’s hard not to want to get behind the underdog, because music is about being an outcast. All I need is insurmountable odds and I’m in. Give me your worst guitar, a boutique amp made in someone’s mom's garage, and a pedal that’s not supposed to be there, and we’ve got something. When you do that, you instantly feel like these things are yours.

Were there any other unusual aspects to your Kyuss rig?

Kyuss was all neck pickup. That was one of the secrets to thickening things up and taking leads that were one-strings. It just sounded wider. Playing through bass cabinets, I learned that two wrongs don’t make a right but 40 wrongs make a weird. So a bunch of little adjustments – neck pickup, bass cabinets – and their grand total sound completely different.

And you can add the Decade to that…

When I found a Peavey Decade back in the day, it was $15 at a flea market. There was no risk in trying it. It was so small I could take it anywhere. I could hammer nails into it and it wouldn’t break. It was really versatile because there’s saturation, a clean input, and it has a pre- and post-gain; that’s where I learned about that relationship. And with a Coles ribbon mic, it’s one of the greatest bass amps of all time.

For many years we’ve used Decades to warm up before gigs – and in a strange way we never sound better. You can make yourself sound like you’re in the Kinks in two seconds, and if you want to blow it out, it blows out in such a strange way.

I was never a huge fan of distortion but I’m a huge fan of overdrive. I want to blow something apart. Distortion is compression; you’re shrinking it down, and then you need to turn that up, right? The idea of overpowering something seemed more punk rock to me. It’s about the gear, but also the attitude you have to it.

Has anyone ever dismissed the Decade on looks alone?

I showed the Decade to John Paul Jones when we were in Them Crooked Vultures. I have this Yamaha hollowbody bass with flatwounds on it, which I call Lame-aha. Instead of a pickup switch, it’s a volume knob, so you’re on the spectrum of which pickup you’re using. I said, “Try that with the Decade and a Coles ribbon mic.”

He laughed – and I love that, because the looks are deceiving. You’re like, “What is this entire piece-of-shit setup?” Then he played it. It was fun to see him go from giggling about how shitty something looks to complete joy. It’s fun to do that to people and it’s fun to do that to yourself, too.

Peavey is the first brand you’ve done a signature proper with. Had there been other offers on the table before that?

Years ago Ampeg came to me about remaking the VT-40. I was a little suspicious because I’ve never really done endorsements. That’s not my thing – I don’t work for you, man. The way Ampeg approached me, what they wanted to do and how they wanted to treat me, I felt like I was being used.

It was like, “You’re the only person playing this since Keith Richards, so we want to use that image; but we want to make the amp like this…” I wasn’t having it. And I love Ampeg; I have so much Ampeg gear. But life is about what it is now, not what it was. I’m not a puppet that you can put your hand up its ass and make do stuff.

Plus, I wanted to make something that anybody could buy. I’m talking with Echo Park about doing a line of limited guitars, and I have a few ideas about the styles of the tone. Those things will be expensive because of what it takes to do that. It’s unfortunate.

So I thought, “I’ve gotta do something with Peavey that everyone can get!” And there’s that notion of a little kid in a small town; when they get started playing guitar or bass, I’m there with them.

And the amp has some added extras.

We went back to the Decade and tried to retain all the good stuff. But I said, “You’ve got to hear this WEM solid state head that I have!” There’s a bright switch that turns your eyes from half open to pinned open like Alex from Clockwork Orange. So we took a note from that for the treble switch.

There’s a bass switch to make it eat a little chocolate so it gets a little chubby on the bottom. Then, since you want to use stuff like this in the studio, a direct out with XLRs, so you're not fucking with buzz and noise. You can control that volume too, so you can really pin the rails going direct and just blow the thing out completely.

Then I was like, “We’ve got to do a stack! We have to have an extension cabinet and ape the Vox cabinet stands because they look so fucking cool!” It’s such an over engineered idea to have a stand for a small cabinet. It’s funny.

Is that your Spinal Tap Stonehenge moment?

Yeah, 100 percent – it turns it into a Stonehenge! Everyone can do 90 percent; it’s that last 10 percent that matters. It’s the little details that reveal your true intentions.

Like a hammer, it’s useful in all situations. You can pull nails, break windows and build something with this thing. It was fun to design; John, the engineer at Peavey, really got it.

What other gear is exciting you right now?

Have you tried the Jack White Fender Pano Verb? It’s fucking insane! Jack clearly has OCD on an exaggerated level; he’s such a stickler for details. He sent over a cavalcade of shit. The Triplecaster is great, too; it’s a lot of possibilities in one guitar. So I’m giving Jack my Stonehenge in return.

Our guitar player, Troy Van Leeuwen, has a knack for being really loud and demolishing things without noticing. So I plugged into this thing with the settings that were on there. I always do that whatever an amp is sent – I plug in and assume that somebody had some idea somewhere, and it sounded fucking amazing.

We tracked some music with it right away, and we ended up using it as scratch because the tone was so good. Then Troy plugged into it, same settings, different guitar – boom! He blew the speaker.

What’s your strangest gear find?

Many years ago, in a pawn shop in Lawrence, Kansas, I found a 1938 Gibson EH-185 combo amp. At the time, Gibson was making amps in batch of fives; everything was handmade, so each batch sounded subtly different. It’s one of the great amps of all time.

And I got the matching lap steel that came with it. It was $300 for the pair, because who plays lap steel? That’s one of the reasons it’s been a part of Queens since the very beginning. Lap steel is to guitar what ice skating is to walking: it’s the slippery version. So I’ve always had this attraction. It’s wonderful to get something when someone didn’t know what they were getting rid of.

On tour I’d go through the Recycler papers. When everyone was moving to digital I got so much outboard gear from old churches, like Collins compressors for $100 – and now they’re thousands and thousands. Going through a church yard sale and picking out two noise gates and suppressors for $100… that sort of scavenger hunting is one of the real joys of this. As a shepherd of the weird, I can say those are the places to go.

• For more on the Decade Too, head to Peavey.

Josh Homme’s collaboration with Peavey for the Decade Too was the first time the Queens of the Stone Age man had released a piece of gear with his name on it. But he’d had offers to work on signature gear before – and even once turned down the chance to work with a company he loves.

The Peavey Decade practice amp was unveiled as Homme’s “secret weapon” back in 2021, and it’s since developed an almost mythical reputation as part of his elusive guitar rig.

When in Them Crooked Vultures, his supergroup with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones, Homme showed it to the Led Zeppelin bass player, who laughed at the “piece of shit” amp before plugging into it.

Yet, before linking up with Peavey, Homme was in line for another potential signature release with a different company. But, in a soon-to-be-published interview with Guitar World, Homme explains why he ultimately turned them down.

“Years ago, Ampeg came to me about remaking the VT 40, and I was a little suspicious, because I've never really done endorsements,” he says. “That's not my thing. I don't work for you, man.”

Homme had famously turned to the bass amps and an exclusive use of the neck pickup of his guitars to forge his stoner rock-inspiring tone in Kyuss. As such, a signature model, from Ampeg’s side at least, felt like a sure-fire winner. But Homme’s reservations stood tall.

“With the way Ampeg approached me, what they wanted to do, and how they wanted to treat me, I felt like I was being used,” Homme returns. “It was like, ‘All right, you're the only person playing this since Keith Richards, so we want to use that image, but we want to make the amp like this…’

“Honestly, I wasn't having it. And I love Ampeg. I have so much Ampeg gear. But life is about what it is now, not what it was. I'm not a puppet that you can put your hand up its ass and make do stuff.”

The Peavey tie-in, he goes on to say, was different on all levels. Here, the collaboration produced a $399 combo amp, and a $199 pedal edition, that “every man, woman, and child could scrape up the dough to get.”

It seems to have sparked a newfound appreciation for signature gear, with other collaborations in the works, which he alludes to in his Guitar World interview.

Elsewhere, Homme recently credited ‘oompah oompah’ guitar for aiding his knack for writing off-kilter guitar riffs, and explained why much of his core songwriting takes place on an acoustic.

Queens of the Stone Age’s inimitable bandleader, Josh Homme, has historically been tight-lipped about the gear he uses, but that all changed in 2021 when he revealed his “secret weapon” to be the Peavey Decade, a tiny and ultra-affordable combo amp.

The amp, first released in the 1980s – and re-released as a Homme signature model last year – proves that good things can come in small packages, and it’s helped define the band’s sound over the years. But when Homme showed the amp to Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, the legendary bassist couldn’t help but laugh.

The pair had teamed up with Dave Grohl for the short-lived supergroup, Them Crooked Vultures, for one album in 2009. There, Jones quickly learned that looks can be deceiving.

“I have this Yamaha hollowbody bass with flat wounds on it, which I call Lame-aha,” Homme tells Guitar World. “Instead of a pickup switch, it’s a Volume knob, so you’re on the spectrum of which pickup you’re using.

“And I said [to John Paul Jones], ‘Try that with the Decade and a Coles ribbon mic.’ He laughed, and I love that, because the looks are deceiving.”

Homme revealing that his go-to amp for both electric guitar and bass was a Peavey that packed just 10 watts of power was met with disbelief. Surely his secret weapon was something more... well, glamorous. Powerful. Homme feeds off those reactions.

“The first thing after you look at it is you're like, ‘What is this entire piece of shit set up?’” Homme accepts. “And then he played it. And to see him go from giggling about how shitty something looks to joy, it's fun to do that to people. And it's fun to do that to yourself, too.”

Homme's signature Peavey Decade Too was given a host of new features, including Bass, Treble, and Saturation (Overdrive) boosting switches, alongside more output options to cater to modern recording needs. Don’t underestimate it.

Guitar World’s full interview with Josh Homme, exploring his unique approach to gear, will be published online in the near future.

In recent news, Homme explained why he prefers to write on an acoustic, and discussed why getting ‘oompah oompah’ lessons as a child helped him write more off-kilter guitar parts.

Since making its debut on October 11, 1975, NBC’s Saturday Night Live has been a pop-culture juggernaut like no other.

But before becoming a weekend staple for generations of late-night viewers, creator Lorne Michaels’ variety show began as a brash, uniquely irreverent counterculture experiment boldly pairing off-the-cuff outsider comedy with of-the-moment musical guests – for the record, the first show featured Billy Preston, Janis Ian and, arguably most memorably, Andy Kaufman miming his way through the Mighty Mouse theme song.

Indeed, while it’s a comedy-first operation, music has always been a major part of SNL’s appeal – and, obviously, that means we’ve seen a lot of guitarists grace the show’s stage.

It’s been a spot for bands to crank it up just before their careers went supernova. Others faltered spectacularly on live TV, beneath the bright lights of Studio 8H and under the watch of millions of viewers at home.

Some of the greatest guitar virtuosos showed up unannounced for once-in-a-lifetime jams. A pair of blues-loving bees morphed into the show’s breakout musical act.

While it’s all made for hundreds upon hundreds of must-see moments, to paraphrase the show’s iconic metalhead character, Wayne Campbell – a.k.a. Mike Myers, an obtuse on-air shredder in his own right – some were more worthy than others.

So, in honor of the show’s staggering 50 years on the air, ladies and gentleman, behold the 50 greatest guitar moments in SNL history.

50. The Rolling Stones – Shattered

Season 4, Episode 1; October 7, 1978

While nabbing the Stones was a major coup, the band’s lone SNL appearance isn’t remembered for being great. Mick Jagger’s voice is shot and unpretty through Beast of Burden, but Shattered taps into the sleazy urgency of the Some Girls era.

It also embodies the chaotic, anything-goes-in-the-moment spirit of live TV right about the time Jagger starts snapping his ivory sportcoat at Ronnie Wood, wet-towel style.

49. The Devil Can’t Write No Love Song sketch

Season 25, Episode 5; November 13, 1999

Garth Brooks plays a down-on-his-luck musician willing to sell his soul for a hit. Ready to make a trade, Lucifer – a horned-and-bearded Will Ferrell – bursts onto the scene with a devil-red Fender built out of a “hell-spun mixture of the bones of fornicators.” Trouble is, the dark lord is a damned terrible songsmith. Fred’s Slacks is a brittle-toned, out-of-tune geek-rock atrocity, and his originals only get cringier from there.

48. Joan Armatrading – I’m Not in Love / Down to Zero

Season 2, Episode 21; May 14, 1977

The highlight of Joan Armatrading’s SNL performances is the sound of her rich and oaken vocal – but her stately 12-string chording chimes through the mix quite nicely, too.

Whether through the dew-eyed I’m Not in Love or the yearning folk-rock of Down to Zero, guitarist Jerry Donahue also brought a waterfall-rippling wave of flanged-out fretboard elegance to the arrangements.

47. System of a Down – B.Y.O.B.

Season 30, Episode 18; May 7, 2005

The SNL censors were prepared to bleep out the F-bombs SOAD’s Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian regularly scheduled into their zany, kinda thrash/kinda ska single B.Y.O.B. The latter let loose an unscripted “fuck yeah” during a surf-zested string slide, though, which ended up putting he and the rest of System on SNL’s blacklist. They never played the show again.

46. Metallica – Fuel

Season 23, Episode 8; December 6, 1997

An argument could be made that SNL blew it by not booking Metallica during the height of ’80s thrash and that they slept on the biggest metal band in the world circa Enter Sandman.

But producers gave ’tallica fans that which they desired by finally bringing aboard the band during their Reload period. Fuel found Kirk Hammett all-gassing his wah-wah solo. James Hetfield kept on theme by strapping himself to a flame-emblazoned Flying V.

45. The Tragically Hip – Grace, Too

Season 20, Episode 16; March 25, 1995

When original Not Ready for Prime-time Player Dan Aykroyd was asked to co-host this episode, he agreed – with a caveat: fellow Ontarians the Tragically Hip had to come along with him.

Gord Downie grinned cherubically as he flubbed his first line, but Canada’s Band otherwise nailed the artfully hard-rocking Grace, Too, guitarist Rob Baker flexing a wide, flavorful vibrato into its finale.

44. Adam Sandler – The Thanksgiving Song

Season 18, Episode 7; November 21, 1992

Sandler used his Weekend Update segments to test out goofball characters like Cajun Man and Opera Man. The news desk was also where he developed his voice as a singer-guitarist, and that all starts with The Thanksgiving Song.

Coming out the gates with cheerful 7th chords and a toothy grin, he uses the quaint acoustic jazz-folk song to toast turkey dinners and serve up a side of pop-culture non-sequiturs.

43. Queens of the Stone Age – Little Sister

Season 30, Episode 19; May 14, 2005

Though drummer Joey Castillo was already clonking his plastic jam block hard-and-heavy through this segment, Will Ferrell apparently felt that Queens could use more cowbell.

The comedian reprised his famous Gene Frenkle character – ill-fitting shirt and all – and whapped to his heart’s delight, but the impromptu percussive performance wasn’t the scene-stealer. Credit that to Josh Homme putting on a clinic with his serpentine flair.

42. Big Ricky & the Minnows – “Bass Lake” sketch

Season 50, Episode 16; April 5, 2025

A lakeside potluck jam on Tom Petty’s Free Falling goes horribly awry once Big Ricky – played by an increasingly exasperated Jack Black – realizes everyone hitting the stage is hoisting a bass and the soupiest tone of all time (“The quality of sound feels like a sinus infection”).

The low-end nightmare swells into a dozen rhythm-stringers and one particularly talented basset hound trying to find their footing within the frequency, with disastrous results.

41. Spinal Tap – Big Bottom

Season 9, Episode 18; May 5, 1984

Talk about bass chops, these guys got ’em. Unlike Black’s bass sketch, Tap’s low-end monstrous performance of Big Bottom was no shit sandwich. Performed on air just two months after This Is Spinal Tap hit screens, the band’s performance of their multi-bass opus rumbled with hilarious, horn-dog fervor.

Derek Smalls lays down the initial rhythm with a double-neck bass. Nigel Tufnel hits those perfect fourths like a pro. The synth-bass is on point, too. But it might be David St. Hubbins mud-flappin’ lead bass prowess that pushes the ludicrous metal anthem into overdrive.

40. J Mascis & the SNL band – Out There

Season 25, Episode 16; April 8, 2000

It’s a travesty that J Mascis never got to chop through this Where You Been? stunner on the show with the rest of Dinosaur Jr. in the ’90s. Nevertheless, a 20-second sampling of Out There – which Mascis performed while sitting in with the house band – found the alt-rock guitar hero wham-smashing his way through a micro-sized but massive-sounding SNL moment. This performance took us to the commercial break seconds after the show staged its iconic “More Cowbell” sketch.

39. The Black Crowes – Sometimes Salvation

Season 18, Episode 9; December 12, 1992

Sometimes Salvation is a funny pick because the Crowes’ aching, extended blues ballad shares a similar feel to the SNL band’s longtime closing credits jam, Waltz in A. Where it differs is that the Georgia rockers also had Marc Ford sustaining a series of seismically reckless and romantic bends through his spacious solo. And it’s spectacular.

38. Foo Fighters – Times Like These

Season 28, Episode 13; February 22, 2003

Foo Fighters are prolific SNL guests, having hit the program nine times since 1995. Their third pop-in at 30 Rock came during the promotion cycle for One by One and began with a crunching version of All My Life.

But Times Like These is what makes the highlight reel – not just because the Foos crushed their yearning anthem with ease, but because Jim Carrey stormed the stage mid-song to air guitar his right leg like a maniac.

37. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Stone Cold Bush / Under the Bridge

Season 17, Episode 14; February 22, 1992

Dubious to include, but hard to ignore, the Chilis left a strange taste in millions of mouths with this off-kilter two-fer. Stone Cold Bush was funky, but merely fine – Flea gets appropriately slappy on the bass, but things get weird when vocalist Anthony Kiedis soccer-slides toward John Frusciante and boots his bandmate in the butt.

Under the Bridge is even more tense, with Frusciante cresting through a loose fluidity that paints a bit too outside the lines – and with a lot of brown. He ends the alt-ballad howling in falsetto like a hound from hell. The rest of the band seem stunned over their tragic Magik performance.

36. Boz Scaggs – Lowdown

Season 2, Episode 2; September 25, 1976

Elliot Randall’s wildcard solo is one of SNL’s most uproarious musical WTF moments. Halfway through the hit’s soft disco shuffle, Randall rips out to center stage for a furious hellfire of hammer-ons.

He tries to hit a behind-the-nut bend but kind of biffs it, then walks back with a huge smile to resume his soulfully rhythmic plinking.

Slang-style praise or secret diss, Scaggs jumps back in to croon with perfect comedic timing: “You ain’t got to be so bad.”

35. Prince – Partyup

Season 6, Episode 11; February 21, 1981

Prince’s most storied SNL performance arguably isn’t this one, and it wasn’t even in public – rather, a slow-jammed Let’s Go Crazy during the show’s 40th-anniversary afterparty in 2015 apparently had cast members losing their minds. But his televised Partyup in ’81 was still plenty iconic, with the Purple One parading around in thigh-high boots and sex-grinding his guitar with slinking funk licks.

34. Tracy Chapman – Give Me One Reason

Season 15, Episode 9; December 16, 1989

Here’s a good reason to have owned a VHS machine in the ’80s: Chapman’s rhythm-locked, Grammy-winning blues-rocker Give Me One Reason was performed on SNL a full six years before it made it onto an album.

Chapman anchored its television debut with subtle, staccato acoustic fingering and her soulful vocal, though the house band gets into the action, too; Tom “T-Bone” Wolk injects jumping-bean bass accents while bandleader G.E. Smith delivers Delta-ready slidework.

33. Devo – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

Season 4, Episode 2; October 14, 1978

Devo’s subversive take on the Stones classic harnesses the palpably anxious and painfully horny undercurrent of the anthem arguably better than when it’s ever sung by Jagger.

Sweet release arrives through this performance, where Devo – deep in their matching hazmat suit-and-3D glasses era – twitch through the tune like a bunch of broken androids, Mark Mothersbaugh wilding out while using a Hagstrom 1 with boosts and overdrives duct-taped all over its cherry body.

32. Pearl Jam – Not for You / Rearviewmirror / Daughter

Season 19, Episode 18; April 16, 1994

Pearl Jam were arguably the biggest band in the world in the spring of 1994, so SNL showcased the hell out of the Seattle quintet during their second appearance on the show – even offering them a rare third song. Their Daughter performance, in particular, presented an extended Jam; the group gave the alt-rock anthem a funky two-minute outro full of vibe-heavy fretless bass and ad-libbed Crazy Horse lyrics.

31. AC/DC – Stiff Upper Lip / You Shook Me All Night Long

Season 25, Episode 15; March 18, 2000

AC/DC’s SNL debut found the band cranking into their Back in Black classic a whopping 20 years after its initial release. In a solid performance, Angus Young wails hard and goes full-Curly while spinning around the ground during the finale.

Earlier in the evening, though, the eternal schoolboy and brother Mal arguably locked in harder for the gritty, then-current and super-underrated Stiff Upper Lip.

30. Punk Band Reunion at the Wedding sketch (Crisis of Conformity – Fist Fight in the Parking Lot)

Season 35, Episode 14; February 6, 2010

What begins as a father sheepishly getting his old band back together at his daughter’s wedding reception quickly devolves into one of SNL’s most raging hardcore performances ever. Fred Armisen sneers his way through ’80s-style Reagan-punk lyrics, while the arrangement itself quotes Suicidal Tendencies’ Institutionalized.

The table-crashing, glass-smashing melee gets all-too-real once drummer Dave Grohl’s mic cuts out. A cream Strat-strapped Kutcher saves the day by lunging over with another mic – which also reveals he’s definitely not the one punk-chording through their Parking Lot.

29. The Replacements – Bastards of Young / Kiss Me on the Bus

Season 11, Episode 7; January 18, 1986

G.E. Smith was a Replacements fan and called the group when SNL needed a last-minute replacement for the Pointer Sisters. The Replacements proceeded to get drunk backstage with host Harry Dean Stanton and strolled out to deliver slapdash Tim songs while sloshed out of their skulls.

Paul Westerberg fumbled lyrics, Bob Stinson played a loaner Les Paul after he fell on his own guitar on the way to the stage. The night was best summed up by the first line of Bastards of Young: “God… what a mess.”

28. Bonnie Raitt – Thing Called Love

Season 15, Episode 11; January 20, 1990

Nearly 12 years to the day after her first SNL appearance, Bonnie Raitt returned to the show to slide through this blues-rock blazer. At one point she bats at the body of her Strat to gain some gnarly sustain. Later, she juxtaposes a fiery, near-30-second glass slide solo against the arrangement’s laidback, roadhouse-reggae breakdown.

27. Lenny Kravitz – Are You Gonna Go My Way / Always on the Run

Season 18, Episode 18; April 17, 1993

Everything went Kravitz and co-guitarist Craig Ross’ way. Sporting the rawest and most iconic rock riff of ’93, the pair brought harmonized pull-offs and Hendrix-ian sharps to a pitch-perfect performance of Are You Gonna Go My Way – and then Ross delivered a wailing solo.

They then dug into their retro-rock war chest for Mama Said single Always on the Run, expertly swaggering themselves through fuzz-funk syncopation before Ross splintered off with another heater solo.

26. Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit / Territorial Pissings

Season 17, Episode 10; January 11, 1992

Nirvana’s Nevermind dethroned the King of Pop’s Dangerous from the Number 1 spot on the Billboard chart the same week they dropped by SNL. Understandably, they played Teen Spirit, the industry-revolutionizing game-changer that got them there.

That said, Territorial Pissings was the livelier of their two performances; Cobain capped the manic track by smashing his guitar into a tower of logo-less cabs; Krist Novoselic hucks his bass into the air like loose change; Grohl rains drum hardware across the soundstage.

25. Rage Against the Machine – Bulls on Parade

Season 21, Episode 17; April 13, 1996

Interestingly, the SNL time bookers paired billionaire media mogul and Republican nominee hopeful Steve Forbes with left-leaning political rap-rockers Rage Against the Machine.

Rage tried to hang upside-down U.S. flags across their cabs as a form of protest, which led to an onstage confrontation with patriotic stagehands, who yanked away the subversive Stripes milliseconds before the band kicked into Bulls. Tom Morello crushed it with his wah work and mock-scratch technique. Then the band got booted out of the building.

24. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – You Don’t Know How It Feels / Honey Bee

Season 20, Episode 6; November 19, 1994

Petty’s fifth of eight appearances on SNL came during his Wildflowers cycle and boasted a new, temporary Heartbreaker behind the drum kit: Dave Grohl. The performance interestingly falls between the latter’s post-Nirvana, pre-Foo Fighters period, and he hits those cans heavy.

You Don’t Know How It Feels was a crowd pleaser, but the real treat is Honey Bee. The swamp-soupy garage-blues tune had Mike Campbell dripping out liquid gold guitar leads, but Petty hits an uncaged-and-uncouth, bendy solo of his own.

23. Aerosmith on Wayne’s World

Season 15, Episode 13; February 17, 1990

Satirically or not, SNL’s resident headbangers-cum-cable access hosts hoisted the flag for heavy music during a time where the show probably should have booked more metal acts.

Nevertheless, Wayne and Garth still got their party on with Aerosmith one time, with Joe Perry and Brad Whitford beefing up Mike Myers’ mock-squealing Wayne’s World theme as a basic-but-brawny basement rocker. Aerosmith also hit a pair of Pump tunes for the show, but this was their biggest bash of the night.

22. Fear – Beef Baloney

Season 7, Episode 4; October 31, 1981

Fear was brought onto SNL as a favor to fan and then-former castmate John Belushi, whom showrunners were hoping would pop back on the program for a cameo.

Fear then invited hardcore kids from across the Eastern seaboard – including members of Minor Threat and Negative Approach – to mosh out during a chaotic four-song medley. Bassist Lee Ving is constantly chasing a micstand as it gets knocked about by stage divers.

21. Phoebe Bridgers – I Know the End

Season 46, Episode 11; February 6, 2021

Phoebe Bridgers wasn’t the first person to smash a guitar on SNL, but she’s the one who got the most flak for it. I Know the End starts subtle, but the indie-rocker ended up primal screaming her way through the climax – which likewise found co-guitarist Harrison Whitford delivering quixotic scalework – before yanking off her jet black Danelectro and decimating it against a speaker wedge. The misogyny brigade tried to shame her on socials; Bridgers sold the axe for $100,000 and donated it all to charity.

20. Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band – Hot Head / Ashtray Heart

Season 6, Episode 2; December 22, 1980

Beefheart’s underrated early ’80s period found the experimental icon making music with the meanest-sounding iteration of his Magic Band. They put on a feisty performance for a shocked SNL crowd – guitarist Moris Tepper, in particular, spewing hot fire with his junk-blues sliding.

Beefheart cradled a cigarette, brilliantly rifling off a dadaist word salad through a haggard wheeze that sounded like his lungs had burnt right down to the filter.

19. Living Colour – Cult of Personality / Open Letter (to a Landlord)

Season 14, Episode 16; April 1, 1989

Living Colour’s April Fool’s appearance found Vernon Reid going off-the-charts gonzo with his inspired fusion playing.

He cut loose through a mind-bending, minute-long solo on Cult of Personality and then leaned into a vivid display of ambulance siren-styled inverted bending on Open Letter (to a Landlord).

The only thing that might’ve outshone Reid’s playing was Corey Glover’s extremely late-’80s, iridescent purple-and-yellow BodyGlove wetsuit.

18. Rihanna (with Nuno Bettencourt) – Diamonds

Season 38, Episode 7; November 10, 2012

Nuno Bettencourt never got the funk out on SNL during Extreme’s peak. Despite this, the Boston virtuoso was able to shine bright like a diamond when he popped up on the show as part of Rihanna’s backing band. The focal point is the pop star, without question, and Bettencourt begins the song with minimalist, volume pot-craning ambiance. But by song’s end, he’s soaring through the mix with a boldly prismatic vibrato.

17. David Bowie – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

Season 22, Episode 12; February 8, 1997

Armed with a Parker Fly, an unruly series of harmonic slides and an onslaught of out-of-control pinch-squeals, ace guitarist Reeves Gabrels (nowadays a member of the Cure) was a beast to behold on Scary Monsters.

Bowie & Co. were supposed to play something off 1997’s Earthling, but they went rogue and performed the retro cut as a form of protest after the singer objected to a sketch idea – and as a dig on Lorne Michaels, who told Bowie about a terrifying cocaine binge he’d been on while listening to Scary Monsters in the ’80s.

They were ushered out of the building ASAP. Bowie reportedly regretted not grabbing the fruit basket on the way out.

16. Top of the Pops sketch (aka Ian Rubbish & the Bizarros – It’s a Lovely Day)

Season 38, Episode 21; May 18, 2013

Fred Armisen’s SNL tenure was full of musical characters, one of his most memorable being comically hate-filled Spirit of ’77 punk eccentric Ian Rubbish.

While the U.K. snarler had many memorable lyrical barbs, Armisen’s last show as a full-time cast member found him slapping on Rubbish’s peroxide wig and a Fano Alt de Facto to deliver an earnest farewell anthem called It’s a Lovely Day.

It turns into a jam featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones, J Mascis, Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. Is this one of Armisen’s top-10 greatest TV appearances of all time? Yeah, probably.

15. H.E.R. – Hold On

Season 46, Episode 4; October 24, 2020

H.E.R. wowed guitar-heads doubly in this Season 46 standout moment. She shot melodious, mile-wide vibrato through the ceiling during a revelatory performance of R&B slow jam Hold On.

She also used her time on SNL to showcase a then-brand-new signature Fender Chrome Glow Strat, which reflected a rainbowed array of colors beneath the stage lights that was almost as resplendent as her tone.

14. Robert Cray – Smoking Gun / Right Next Door (Because of Me)

Season 12, Episode 13; February 28, 1987

While Smoking Gun was tight, we’re going to suggest that it’s Cray’s run-through of Right Next Door that left a stronger impression on the music-loving public.

There’s a sleek, clean-channel mystique coursing through the smooth-blues arrangement, Cray accenting his adulterous tale with perfect, passionately plinking accent rhythms.

By song’s end, he bait-and-switches us with a yearning backend climax of wry little wriggles and finger-snapped string work. Of course, if you're going back and watching all these, don't deprive yourself of Smoking Gun.

13. The Smashing Pumpkins – Cherub Rock

Season 19, Episode 5; October 30, 1993

The Pumpkins went in for the kill during their first appearance on SNL. The performance of loud-quiet-loud classic Today was spectacular, but the alt-rock champs went nuclear on Cherub Rock.

Billy Corgan shreds his sinewy vocal cords throughout and wails a furious solo on his modded Bat-Strat. James Iha likewise gets in a few nasty and textural bends before they put this all-out bash to bed.

12. Beastie Boys – Ricky’s Theme / Heart Attack Man

Season 20, Episode 8; December 10, 1994

The Beasties’ second muscial spot of the night began with instrumental soul jam Ricky’s Theme, where auxiliary Beasties player Money Mark’s morning glory electric piano glistened against Ad-Rock’s sly-and-wily wah-wah guitar and MCA’s lithe standup basslines.

An extended cymbal segue leads to gear-swapping and a furious aesthetic pivot, as the Boys then go buckwild with a pacemaker-exploding old-school hardcore freakout. Ad-Rock smashes an S-shape into the ground – splinters fly into the air as the screen fades to black.

11. Adam Sandler – Lunch Lady Land

Season 19, Episode 11; January 15, 1994

From Red Hooded Sweatshirt to The Chanukah Song, most of Adam Sandler’s SNL music went unplugged. But unencumbered by the confines of the Weekend Update desk, the Sandman went full-electric with a black Gibson Les Paul to strum this Bruce Springsteen-ian opus about elementary foodstuffs revolting against their maker.

Sandler sells his Jungleland rip with goofball heartland earnestness. Of course, the sight of Chris Farley’s hair-netted Lunch Lady gracefully plié-ing across the stage near Kevin Nealon’s sentient Manwich pushes the performance into all-timer territory.

10. Fishbone – Sunless Saturday / Everyday Sunshine

Season 16, Episode 16; March 23, 1991

Despite its gloom-clouded song title, Fishbone were beyond brilliant on Sunless Saturday. Frontman Angelo Moore somersaulted across the stage with manic energy and put on an acrobatic vocal performance. John Norwood Fisher flexed thick bass thwaps across the soul-metal fusion piece.

A double-strapped Kendall Jones switched between acoustic strums and flanged-out-and-frantic tap solos on an S-shape. Keeping things on-theme, they then dipped into the funkily Vitamin D-dosed “Everyday Sunshine” for their second song.

9. St. Vincent – Birth in Reverse

Season 39, Episode 21; May 17, 2014

While the Season 39 finale brought out rappers 2 Chainz and Lil Jon for a pair of sketches, Annie Clark commanded the stage with playfully panicked art-punk energy during her performance of Birth in Reverse. Early on, she’s twitching out jazz chords on a vintage 1955 M-75 Aristocrat.

By the finale, a choreography routine finds St. Vincent and guitarist Toko Yasuda harmonizing post-shred bristliness while parading the stage like a pair of nectar-crazy hummingbirds.

8. Elvis Costello – Radio Radio

Season 3, Episode 8; December 17, 1977

“I’m sorry ladies and gentlemen; there’s no reason to do this song here.” In one of the show’s most iconic moments, musical or otherwise, Elvis Costello came into 8H to play Less Than Zero but abruptly and awkwardly halted the single to re-route his band toward a spritely but unexpected Radio Radio.

The swerve had staff panicking behind the scenes. He’d later say it was because Zero was too slow; it might’ve been that its lyrics on the rise of British fascism were, well, incredibly British. Costello satirically recreated the chaos for SNL’s 25th-anniversary special in 1999, hijacking Beastie Boys’ Sabotage to once again play Radio Radio.

7. David Gilmour with G.E. Smith & the SNL Band – Song for My Sara

Season 13, Episode 7; December 12, 1987

This episode brought out two musical guests, wildly juxtaposing Buster Poindexter’s broad, brass-heavy calypso-sleaze smash Hot Hot Hot with Gilmour’s tastefully funky instrumental, Song for My Sara.

Supported by the SNL band, the latter echo-quaked melodious vibrato from his headless Steinberger GM 3T. T-Bone Wolk thumb-and-finger popped his way through the piece. G.E. Smith is all smiles while supporting the Pink Floyd legend. The song was never officially released, making Gilmour’s drop-in appearance even more unique.

6. Eddie Van Halen with G.E. Smith & the SNL Band – Stompin’ 8H

Season 12, Episode 13; February 28, 1987

Van Halen’s lone and unplanned SNL appearance arose out of boredom. As then-wife Valerie Bertinelli was rehearsing skits that week, EVH ended up in the music office trading licks with Smith, and together they whipped up a bluesy lil’ choogle named after the show’s 8H soundstage.

Eddie goes full Orca-moan on his striped Kramer 5150 before flitting between tasteful quarter-note taps and cut-throat runs. Smith is ear-to-ear grinning while chopping at his Tele. The two guitarists literally – but playfully – butt heads mid-stage, though they stood united for this memorable drop-in moment.

5. Stevie Ray Vaughan – Say What! / Change It

Season 11, Episode 10; February 15, 1986

As Double Trouble drummer Chris Layton recalled years later, host Jerry Hall’s then-husband, Mick Jagger, was around during rehearsals. Mick almost sat in with the band for their SNL debut but ultimately didn’t have the stones to go through with the team-up. Instead, a mass of Texas talent graced the stage, with SRV first hitting 12-bar instrumental Say What! as a screaming, whammy-and-wah-wild workout.

For the cocksure Change It, he strutted through flavorful blues runs alongside fellow Strat-smith, brother and Fabulous Thunderbirds co‑founder Jimmie Vaughan.

4. George Harrison and Paul Simon – Here Comes the Sun / Homeward Bound

Season 2, Episode 8; November 20, 1976

Back in the first season, Michaels went on-air to offer the Beatles a hilariously paltry $3,000 – to split however they’d like – if they appeared on his show (“You want to give Ringo less? That’s up to you”). Paul McCartney and John Lennon were apparently watching the show together in NYC and damn near took a cab to 30 Rock to collect. But it was Harrison who became the first Beatle to play on SNL, and he did it with another music icon.

In one of most stunningly tender musical moments of the early years, Harrison and Paul Simon teamed up to strum and folk-finger through the former’s Here Comes the Sun and the latter’s Homeward Bound, back to back. Outside of their acoustics and gentle vocal harmonies, it’s pin-drop silent in the studio, the audience watching history in the making.

To say the least, the performance was more than alright – it was god damned magical. McCartney would ultimately show up as a musical guest four times between 1980 and 2012, and he closed out this year’s 50th-anniversary show with another Abbey Road classic, The End. Ringo hosted in 1984.

3. Jack White – Taking Me Back / Fear of the Dawn

Season 48, Episode 13; February 25, 2023

Ever since the White Stripes bashed through a radically raw Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground on 8H in 2002, Jack White has been an SNL fixture.

On top of being a five-time musical guest, he once ripped a solo as a six-stringing wedding crasher in a 2018 sketch and also covered Rockin’ in the Free World during this year’s SNL50 concert.

While he cut a memorable double-handed tapping tribute to EVH in 2020, his mic stand-toppling, pedalboard-maximalist Taking Me Back / Fear of the Dawn medley in 2023 was a fiendishly feral display of fuzz-blown sonics and wah expressionism.

2. The Blues Brothers – Soul Man

Season 4, Episode 6; November 18, 1978

John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd prototyped their musical-brothers band in the first season with a buzzy, bee-costumed performance of Slim Harpo’s I’m a King Bee. They eventually bought some fedoras and rechristened themselves as Jake and Elwood Blues.

Flanked by members of the SNL band (blues vet Matt “Guitar” Murphy and Stax session all-stars Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn), this Season 4 cold open is the Brothers’ defining moment – and it led them toward a hit record and a blockbuster film.

After smashing into a sweat-box vamp of Otis Redding’s I Can’t Turn You Loose, they choogle through a cool-as-ice cover of Sam & Dave’s Soul Man. Cropper steps into the spotlight with sleek vibrato waggling while Elwood honks his harmonica.

1. Frank Ocean with John Mayer – Pyramids

Season 38, Episode 1; September 12, 2012

Pop-bluesmith John Mayer’s earnest-but-animated performance style was roasted on the show several times, via squinty-eyed, fat-tongued and faux-ripping impersonations from Bill Hader, Jimmy Fallon and host Ashton Kutcher. Mayer got the last laugh with his staggering 2012 guest solo for Frank Ocean.

The R&B singer walks over to a vintage arcade cabinet and starts gaming once Mayer unearths deep, atmospheric bends on a finish-obliterated Strat. A fighting game plays on in the background, but Mayer delivers the knockout blow.

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Scott Reeder found his early days with Kyuss to be a mixed blessing. “I toured with those guys before Blues for the Red Sun was released; I was on that first tour through the States,” he tells Bass Player.

“There were some good shows,” he continues, “but you’d be playing at a sports bar next to the cut-out of some football player! It was depressing after touring Europe with The Obsessed – but I believed in the band. I knew that if we kept at it, we were going to do something.”

It took time for Kyuss to catch on, but Reeder was proved right. He built a strong reputation that led to auditions with Tool and Metallica, although he accepts he took home “the silver medal” in those situations.

These days he works in production while lending his mighty bass licks to select projects. “I don’t look too far ahead,” he says. “I don’t bum out if things are slow because something always falls into my lap. At 60 I’m not anxious to be doing something all the time. When something special pops up, I enjoy every bit of it.”

You’ve participated in a Spinal Tap tribute album.

“Yeah, this guy, Mark Shea, called me a couple of years ago. He was putting together a tribute album to be released in conjunction with the new Spinal Tap film. It’s for Teen Cancer America. The album is called The Majesty of Rock.

“We’ve got Kellii Scott from Failure on drums and Justin Chancellor from Tool on another bass. We’ve got Abby Travis, who’s played with everybody. Rami Jaffee from Foo Fighters is on keys, and Troy Sanders from Mastodon did the vocals, and he tore it up.”

What gear did you use?

“I like to have an amp next to me when I’m tracking so I can get some feedback. I’ve got a micro-SVT in the control room, right next to the console, and I have that thing cranked. I recording through a direct box into the computer or onto tape and then I re-amp that, going through to one of my old SVTs or a custom Bison head.”

What inspired you to play bass?

“I started playing drums when I was five and I was in a punk band in high school. Our bass player’s parents weren’t too happy about him going out and playing gigs, so he quit. We couldn’t find another bass player but we had this guy, Alfredo, in mind for drums. So I bought the guy’s bass, and Alfredo started playing drums.”

What led to your joining The Obsessed in 1990?

“I got a call from Wino [Scott Weinrich]; he had a tour of Germany coming up and a new album to record, so I jumped on that. It was such a huge turning point – it took me away from my punk rock roots towards more a hard rock side.”

What are your memories of The Obsessed’s Lunar Womb?

“When I joined, the German tour was about a month away. Wino had another bass player who’d got in a motorcycle accident and actually died. That’s why I got the gig, and why we were so pressed for time.

“When we flew out to Germany the Desert Storm war was going on, and security was crazy at the airport. A goon in the walkway stopped me and kept asking, ‘Are you carrying more than $10,000 in US currency?’ I was like, ‘Bro, I’ve got five bucks in my pocket!’

“We toured Germany for three weeks. We had a couple of days off, and then we went into the studio and just blasted through everything. We got the whole thing done in less than five days – it might even be three days. It was a lot of first takes because we were well-tuned coming off the road.”

In 1992, you joined Kyuss after Nick Oliveri left the band. Did you know the guys pretty well?

“We did a West Coast tour together when I was in The Obsessed. When it was time to come home, the guys asked me if I wanted to ride with them; so Nick went to the Obsessed van.

“The first night, we’re driving down Highway One and they said, ‘Things are getting a little crazy with Nick. We’re thinking about letting him go – what do you think about joining?’ I turned them down. I said, ‘We’ve got Columbia Records looking at us. I’ve worked too hard for this.’

“About three months later, Brant Bjork called and said, ‘Dude, we’ve kicked out Nick. I know you don’t want to join the band, but we’ve got some crazy shows coming up.’ So I said, ‘I can fill in for these shows.’

“The first day of rehearsal in Josh Homme’s bedroom was just so exciting. Those guys were inspired, hungry and creative. That night I asked my wife, ‘What do you think about moving back to the desert?’ She said, ‘If that’s what you want to do, let’s fucking do it.’ That was it.

“We rehearsed for three days. The first day, me and Josh wrote Space Cadet, that ended up on Welcome to Sky Valley. The day I got back to LA, I went to rehearsal with The Obsessed; we had a couple of shows coming up.

“Right off the bat, Wino was all, ‘So, what are you gonna do, man?’ I said, ‘Dude, I gotta do this thing with Kyuss – but I’ll fulfill my commitment.’ He said, ‘No, it’s cool; we’ll get somebody. It’s all good.’”

What gear did you use once you joined Kyuss, and did you take into account Nick’s tone?

“I didn’t give a shit about Nick’s tone! I already had my thing – Ampeg SVT. And instead of resetting the knobs in the dark before I played, I just cranked the tone controls all the way up. You’re supposed to have them at 12 o’clock then cut or boost a little. I just turned them all the way up! That’s where the overdrive comes from.

“I didn’t use pedals – just straight in, tone controls all the way up. Volume was only around three or four. That’s been my sound forever. Everybody asked, ‘What kind of pedals do you use for that?’ Nothing; just straight in.”

You made two albums with Kyuss –Welcome to Sky Valley and …And the Circus Leaves Town – which are highly regarded. Did you realize they were special right away?

“No, no way! But Sky Valley was us just doing our thing. I didn’t think too far into the future. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, man, people are going to fucking trip on this.’ I thought we’d be lucky to tour for six months or a year, then maybe get an opportunity to do another album and just slogging away.

“I certainly didn’t think that anybody was going to give a shit 30 years doen the road. It blows my mind, especially when younger people are into it. It’s so weird!”

When Kyuss broke up, did Josh ask you to join Queens of the Stone Age, or was it always going to be Nick?

“Josh was recording with [drummer] Alfredo Hernandez, for what I believe became the Queens record. He called and said, ‘Hey, Scotty, we’re recording. Do you want to come over and put some stuff down?’ I was like, ‘So, basically, you want to do Kyuss, but no John Garcia?’

“I said, ‘I’m good,’ because I was really loyal to John. I was bitter, I guess, that there was a breakup. Things were going great, then whatever happened between Josh and John destroyed the whole thing. So at the time, I didn’t want anything to do with Queens.”

Given the success of Queens, do you regret that?

“No regrets! I actually told Josh, after Dave Grohl was gonna leave, ‘It would be trippy if I played drums for you guys!’ But I think they already had the next guy. It’s all good. It took me a few years to go check Queens out; but, it’s water under the bridge with me and Josh now. Good vibes.”

Not long after Kyuss broke up, you auditioned for Tool as a potential replacement for Paul D’Amour.

“Two crazy things came up at the same time. Right after Kyuss, Jason Newstead called me. He said, ‘Dude, you got to get out there and have some fun!’ He flew me and my wife up to the Bay Area and put us up at his house for a few days.

“We recorded some stuff with Devin Townsend on guitar and Dale Crover on drums. And just before I left, I got a call from Tool’s A&R guy, Matt Marshall, who said, ‘Hey, the guys would love to jam with you for a couple of days.’ I had just a couple of days to learn some Tool songs.”

Were you familiar with their music?

“I’d never seen them or met them before; but I loved Undertow. We jammed for three days, ran through a few songs; but mostly just jammed, recorded and vibed. I hit it off with Adam Jones especially.

“The first day, they gave me a cassette of some songs for Ænima that they’d recorded with Paul D’Amour. They were like, ‘Learn whatever you want for tomorrow.’ It had my favorite song, Eulogy. And they invited me to a party that night at Timothy Leary’s house.

“I was torn – I was like, ‘Is this a test to see if I’m into partying, or doing my homework?’ I chose to do the right thing. I went to the studio and worked half the night on Eulogy and some other stuff. And it was fun!”

Did it come down to you and Justin Chancellor in the end?

“Yeah, it was a trip. They said, ‘We’ll give you a call on Halloween, and let you know which way it goes.’ And I got a call from everybody, and they said, ‘Man, we’ve been listening to everything back and forth, but Justin just oozes Tool, and he’s going to be the guy.’ But I made some friendships that still last.”

Circling back to the short-lived group with Jason Newstead, Devin Townsend and Dale Crover, there are unreleased recordings from that session, right? Will we ever hear those?

“Come over to my house – I’ll play them for you! I think Jason had a lot of pressure from the Metallica guys at the time not to put stuff out. And it was pretty rusty stuff, but it was super fun working with those guys.

“It was the party that got my mind off the Kyuss breakup, and got me into a better frame of mind. I will forever be grateful to Jason for hosting that weekend.”

You auditioned for Metallica after he left.

“Somebody from their organization asked me if I was interested, probably right after Jason was out. I was in making a record with Unida; I was like, ‘Thanks, but I’ve got to follow through with this thing.’

“Then I got another call, at least a year later, from Lars Ulrich. I was at our ranch, shoveling moldy hay into a wheelbarrow, and my wife comes out holding the phone. She thought it was a prank call.

“We used to get prank phone calls from Maynard from Tool when we had our pet store. She’s all, ‘Says it’s Lars Ulrich,’ and she’s rolling her eyes. I grabbed the phone, and it was fucking Lars Ulrich! He said, ‘Hey, man, we’ve got to pick a bass player, and would love it if you could come and jam.’

“I was like, ‘Fuck, yeah!’ I said, ‘Let me hold off for a week and I’ll learn some stuff.’ I probably learned 20 songs, then I went to their headquarters, and we had a meeting around the table. It’s all in the film. They had their life-coach guy, Phil, that was part of everything.

“Then we got to go in and jam, and it was so fun playing some of the classics. Next day they were in recording mode from Some Kind of Monster, and I was sitting on the couch next to James Hetfield while he's cutting vocals. I’m like, ‘Is it okay if I’m here?’ He’s all, ‘If it wasn’t, I’d let you know, man. It’s cool.’

“So, I’m sitting next to fucking Hetfield recording vocals for an album – that was pretty crazy! And there was one point for one of the songs, James asked everybody to write down their thoughts on a certain subject. I think it was specifically around the Napster issue.

“Everybody sequestered themselves for half an hour, then we all met back in the control room and read our lines to James. He sat there, stewing on it for a few minutes, then said, ‘Okay, let’s roll tape,’ and he just started laying down stuff. That was pretty amazing to be a part of.”

How did you find out you hadn’t got the Metallica gig?

“We said our goodbyes, and the vibe was that I was going to come back at some point. Kirk Hammett said, ‘We haven’t seen the last of you, Reeder.’ And then, they called me, probably about a month later, a conference call with all the guys.

“They said, ‘Hey, man, we want to let you know we have our guy. But you’re family for life. You’re going to be a part of anything you want to be a part of. Let us know.’ That was it. James called me half an hour later: ‘You sure you’re alright, man?’ I told him, ‘Dude, if there were like the Metal Olympics or something, to get the silver medal is not too shabby!’”

What are you proudest of when you look back?

“That’s tough! I’ve been lucky to work on so many projects; I never got locked into one thing. During Covid we put together this project called Sovereign Eagle. It’s the best my playing has ever been. If I had one record to say, ‘This is me,’ it’s Sovereign Eagle.

Where do you go from here?

“I’m working on a song with Fireball Ministry for an Iron Maiden tribute album. It’s a blessing that I’m not familiar with Iron Maiden – this is like taking the guy from the punk scene and immersing him in the metal scene.

“I had no idea what Steve Harris did on the song. When they gave it to me, I didn’t want to hear it, like, ‘I’m gonna do my thing!’ And it’s ended up great. I don’t think people would even recognize the song. I don’t!”

• The Majesty of Rock: A Spinal Tap Tribute is on sale now.

Caramel, the new album from Isle of Wight quartet Coach Party, is appropriately-named: it’s sweet, it’s messy and it sticks. Still, arriving two years on from their debut, 2023’s KILLJOY, and dripping with striking guitar tones, heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics and some haunting ’80s synth, it’s also a little like a 30-minute exorcism.

The band’s melting pot of ’90s influences – among them grunge, Britpop and shoe gaze – has won some notable hearts and minds, resulting in tours with near neighbours Wet Leg and rock icons Queens of the Stone Age.

“They were most hospitable and really enthusiastic,” reflects guitarist Steph Norris. “But you totally have imposter syndrome when you play with a band like QOTSA, because we’re not good enough. We were amateurs compared to them.”

That’s an overly humble assessment of their talents, as our exclusive live clip of new track Still Hurts [below] attests.

Norris is accompanied in the band by guitarist Joe Perry (not that one), bassist and vocalist Jess Eastwood and drummer/producer Guy Page. We checked in with precisely 75% of them to talk Tokais, touring woes, and their annual consumption of budget tremolo pedals...

Why Caramel?

Page: “It means something different to everyone at different times. A gift, a regret, a nice texture, or an annoying sticky substance. It’s a metaphor.”

Norris: “It’s quite a depressing album, actually – there’s a lot of deep-cut feelings behind each song, pulled from each member.”

Perry: “Medicate Yourself was the first song presented, and it set the personal tone. Its lyrics made the rest of us feel comfortable writing from experience. It’s about doing things to appease the people around you, but not wanting to, and not wanting to get better.”

Did anyone find it challenging to open up those emotions in your writing?

Perry: “If I’ve written it myself, presenting it can be scary. You feel really exposed – but once that barrier goes, it’s a weird form of therapy for all of us. We talk about songs in terms of structure, but we don’t dig into each others’ feelings.”

Norris: “Listening back, you feel like you’re saying something even your closest friends don’t know about you. But we find it easier being honest through music rather than through conversation.”

What influences are in the guitar playing?

Perry: “I admire players, but I don’t have obvious idols. When we played with QOTSA, I saw up close what gear they use. I saw one of their pedals and thought, ‘That’s the sound I’ve been thinking about for 10 years.’ So I bought one.

“They’re really secretive about their pedals, but I think most people now know it anyway – the PDF-1 by Stone Deaf. It’s a filter pedal, so you can boost certain frequencies with distortion as well. Subtle, but cool to pair with other pedals.”

What about the rest of your gear?

Norris: “I play a modern Japanese Tokai Breezysound through two Fender Hot Rods, which gives me more bite than the Fender Telecaster I used to play. But the party piece on this album has actually been the Gretsch baritone.

“On my board, I’ve got four levels of distortion from light to heavy. A Boss SD-1, an Electro-Harmonix Op Amp Big Muff, an Electro-Harmonix J Mascis Ram’s Head Big Muff, then a Redbeard Hairy Squid, which goes crazy.”

Perry: “My go-to is a Fender Mustang 90, which I got for £500. It’s on every record and beat-up to shit, but I love it. A lot of my tone comes from that guitar.

“I also use a J Mascis Jazzmaster, which has more tonal difference flicking between the bridge and neck pickup. I have a newer Fender Vibro Champ and a Roland Jazz Chorus 120, out of necessity because it adds more volume. I can’t listen to a Fender Champ or Jazzmaster on its own – they have to be together.

“In terms of pedals, I’ve got a DigiTech Bad Monkey Tube on 0.5, for more volume. We’re long-term users of RAT distortion pedals, EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Fuzz V2 and the Dispatch Master Reverb.

“The Joyo Tremolo is great for only £30, but we go through one a year as the tremolo becomes faint eventually. My go-to delay is the Mooer Reecho. I don’t use any reverbs on the amp; they’re clean. And a Boss tuner.”

You supported Queens of the Stone Age in 2023. What was that like?

Norris: “At Cardiff Castle the crowd got really into us and accepted us. A whole field of people paid good money to see one of the best bands in the world – and they had a good time when we played!”

Page: “It felt very strict: ‘don’t take photos, don’t film the band.’ We thought we wouldn’t meet them. I was tuning guitars in Halifax before our first show, and Steph ran up the stairs saying, ‘They’re in our dressing room!’

“They’d bought tequila with enough shot glasses for everyone – just 10 minutes before we were due to go on stage. They were really enthusiastic and lovely the whole tour. Joe lit a cigarette for Josh Homme in our dressing room… that’s as amazing as it gets!”

Perry: “We played the first gig thinking, ‘That was amazing.’ Then we watched Queens of the Stone Age and thought, ‘Wow, we’re shit!’ They’re just an absolute clinic in how it’s done.”

You’ve toured with Wet Leg, who are also from the Isle of Wight. Is it a close-knit scene?

Perry: “You’re aware of everyone who plays music on the island. I went to college with the Wet Leg drummer, Henry Holmes.”

Page: “The tour was unusual because we’d known them for years. I taught Rhian Teasdale music theory and drums – she lived round the corner. We hired a Citroën Saxo to cram our shit into, and followed them through rush-hour traffic while they slept in their expensive tour bus!”

Norris: “We’d drive seven hours, shovel food down your mouth, soundcheck then go on stage.”

Page: “It was pretty horrendous in a lot of ways – but most tours, in equal measure, are horrendous and great!”

• Coach Party’s new album Caramel is out now.

When I was growing up, devouring guitar magazines and scouring internet forums, it was a truth universally acknowledged that good guitar tone could only come from a tube amp. End of discussion.

But our definition of what makes a ‘good’ guitar tone has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Heck, it’s changed in the past 10 days, after revered tonesmith John Mayer ditched the amp and plugged directly into JHS Pedals’ latest offering – you know, the one designed to sound like a Tascam Portastudio.

Not too long ago, this kind of behavior would have got you booted out of any self-respecting studio or rehearsal room. But the next generation of guitar heroes is changing our relationship with guitar tone. Or, as Mayer puts it, “There is a revolution taking place right now in guitar playing.”

Mk.gee, of course, is the poster boy for this particular uprising, running a baritone-strung Fender Jaguar into a Tascam 424 and cranking it into the red for a splatty overdrive that would have Klon owners’ monocles popping into their bourbon.

But with Mk.gee’s viral success (not to mention Eric Clapton plaudits), it’s become a sought-after tone – to the point that multiple pedal companies have been rushing to bring their own take on the 424 circuit to market.

And that’s hardly the first traditionally ‘bad’ guitar tone to catch fire recently. It was a similar story with the Peavey Decade. After it was revealed as Josh Homme’s ‘secret weapon’ several years ago, used prices exploded, boutique pedal companies issued their own versions, and now Peavey – the once derided, blue-collar amp brand – has released a signature combo and its own stompbox version.

Yet when those amps were widely available for sale, guitarists couldn’t wait to ditch their buzzy solid-state practice combos.

In the mix

Back in my day (God, I feel old), bad tone was once considered to be that buzzy, ‘wasp in a jam jar’ tone that came from tiny combos, budget multi-effects and the Line 6 Spider II’s infamous Insane channel. Anything boxy, lacking in low-end or tube-like dynamics wouldn’t cut it.

So what gives? Does ‘bad’ guitar tone no longer exist? And, star power aside, how did we get here?

The turning point might be when every young guitarist also became a producer. When previous generations first picked up the instrument, they were developing their guitar tone in isolation – they didn’t have the ability to record themselves without booking an expensive studio. For me, good guitar tone was dialing in a usable sound on the Marshall MG in my bedroom.

Anyone picking up the instrument now, however, could be recording their playing from day one. They’ll be used to hearing the sound of a naked guitar running straight into an audio interface, slotting those recordings into tracks on their laptops, and tweaking plugins that model most of the guitar gear ever made.

And, as any engineer will tell you, the guitar tones that sound best in isolation often don’t work in a mix – but the ‘bad’ tones can burst out of the speakers in the best/worst way.

The good, the bad and the ugly

The other overriding factor is the democratization of ‘good tone’ – we live in an age where anyone can get a studio-worthy guitar sound with cheap amp modelers. So much so that you could make the argument that we’re approaching ‘good’ guitar tone overkill.

How do you stand out when everyone is using the same high-gain Soldano-voiced preset in the same Neural DSP plugin as everyone else? You break the rules.

Mark Speer runs a wah pedal all the time for his dreamy sounds in Khruangbin. St. Vincent and Matt Bellamy are die-hard fans of the sound of fuzz pedals straight into the board. Record an entire album on your phone, like Steve Lacy – then stick a fuzz circuit in your Fender signature model.

Stu MacKenzie snapped up $10 transistor amps for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s latest record. Heck, Instagram guitarist Emi Grace has amassed over 200,000 followers with her ‘Trashy Tone Thursdays’ video series.

Of course, unconventional tonal practices like this have been around forever. John Frusciante, Nile Rodgers and the Beatles used to record direct to the desk. Dimebag Darrell’s solid-state rig flew in the face of all high-gain tonal wisdom. And when Dave Davies slashed his amp’s speaker cone, he lit the touchpaper on guitar distortion as we know it.

All these approaches were technically wrong, but they worked because they fit the material. And that’s the thing we don’t talk about enough when it comes to guitar tone: everything is contextual. The ugliest tone can work in the right spot of the right song – and that is, in part, why it’s so hard to give out bad reviews to guitar gear these days. Every sound has its place.

Tone is where the heart is

All of which provide yet more reasons why it’s such an exciting time to be a guitarist. We’ve never had access to more gear or more music, and as old tonal judgements die out, fresh blood comes along and reassesses what they want to hear.

Music is being experienced without any sense of time, place or scene – one playlist can take you around the world, explore every genre under the sun and span a century of popular music. The next generation of players is picking and choosing the sounds that stand out to them and that makes for a more colorful guitar landscape.

We’re also way beyond the ‘pros only play tube amps’ argument. Fender is remaking its classic combos as new digital offerings. Boss Katanas are being played in stadiums. And pros like John Mayer are playing direct into Akai MPC samplers, and letting producers decide what the tone should be.

That’s no reason not to covet the same Fender Vibroverb that Stevie Ray Vaughan used to use, but as Mayer points out in his JHS demo, different tones make you play differently. It forces you to rethink your relationship with the instrument when you’re playing with less gain or different dynamics.

With that in mind, let’s be real: very few guitarists will make the 424 Gain Stage or Peavey Decade the center of their tonal universe. But the fact these tones are now not just acceptable but downright desirable indicates a full-circle moment for the way we perceive the sound of the electric guitar.

Maybe it’s no longer a case of ‘bad’ tones, just ‘different’ tones. And in the guitar world, that really is a revolution. So put me down for the inevitable Line 6 Spider II Insane pedal. I’m sure I’ll find a use for it…

What is it?

The Peavey Decade Too is an interesting thing to release in 2025. Harking back to the practice amps of the eighties that purveyed long past their initial release, it largely shuns 45 years of progression and stays faithful to what the original Decade practice amp was, albeit with a few additions.

The instigator behind this is the one and only Josh Homme, declaring the Peavey Decade as the “secret weapon” behind his recorded tone (see video below), leading to some internet hysteria and skyrocketing prices for the discontinued Peavey Decade. However, even with this in mind, is there a place for such an old-fashioned amp alongside some much more capable, feature-rich and affordable practice amps out there now?

Specs

• Launch price: $399/£299/€329 (1 x 8" Extension Cabinet $199/£199/€229)
• Type: Combo practice amp with optional extension cab
• Origin: China
• Output: 10W
• Speaker: 8" combo and 8" extension cab
• Channels: Normal, Saturation
• Controls: 3-band eq, Top and Bass Boost, Pre and Post gain
• Connectivity: 1/4 inch input, effects loop, balanced 1/4 inch out, balanced XLR DI out
• Footswitch: Sold separately
• Weight: 5.4kg/12lb
• Dimensions: 15.7x26x16.1cm/6"x10"x6.3"
• Contact: Peavey

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

We’ll have to keep that context in mind when it comes to the sounds, but the build is solid regardless. The Decade Too's open-backed, wooden construction feels sturdy, and with metal braces at the corners by way of reinforcement, this thing will surely be long-lived.

The simple array of controls all feel capable of taking some punishment, and the amp itself is reassuringly heavy at 12lbs, particularly considering the generally lightweight nature of solid-state amplifiers . When I say heavy, I mean it’s heavy for its diminutive size. It’s still a very portable piece of gear, with a small 8” speaker that you can chuck in the back of any car.

The only slight concern with this test model are the switches that produce an audible pop under operation. It's not too loud a pop, and often this issue can be resolved with some repeated presses to dissipate static, however, this did not seem to help here.

Moving on to the 1 x 8" extension cab, it’s much the same thing, minus the controls. The extra feature here is a frame that allows the cab to tilt. It’s quite an imposing, industrial-looking solution that some may find a little obnoxious, especially given how other cabs utilise a couple of low-profile legs to do the same job.

Having said that, the mechanism does work well, and the benefit of the design is that we are afforded the luxury of tilting the cab in whichever way we like, unlimited by the length, shape, and play of the aforementioned legs. It also allows for the stacking of the combo on top of the extension cab, even while tilted. In another plus, it's also completely removable - a good option if that look does offend you.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★★

Modern practice amps have come a long way and sport a large number of features, some easy to use, some not so much. Without those extra bells and whistles, practice amps of the '80s and '90s were simple beasts, and the Peavey Decade Too is no different.

Guitar goes in, volume is controlled via a pre- and post-gain, there's a 3-band EQ to tweak the tone, and new for the Decade Too, Bass and Top switches to boost the bass and top end, plus a Saturation (overdrive) switch. Whilst that is a fair amount on the front panel, it is all well laid out and mostly self-explanatory.

Some may not be used to the pre/post gain setup, but that is easy enough to understand once you know how it works. And even if you don’t, a little messing around will quickly get you there.

The original Peavey Decade had two inputs - a Normal for clean sounds and a Saturation for overdrive. This new version puts this on a switch on the front panel, and can also be controlled via a footswitch - an appreciated improvement.

Around the back of the unit, we have an output for the extension cab, an effects loop, pre-amp out, and a 1/4" unbalanced and XLR transformer balanced direct out, all clearly labeled. Also living here is a phase switch for keeping the extension cab and combo in phase.

Setting up that extension cab is also straightforward, as it’s literally plug and go. Which sums up the operation of the product as a whole - there are some extra features, but no menus or anything complicated, just good old-fashioned, well-labeled knobs and switches.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Judged as a normal practice amp, the Peavey Decade Too sounds like most solid-state practice amps of the affordable ilk from the '80s and '90s, often typified by a thin and wiry tone that we have mostly moved on from in modern equivalents. The Decade, however, was a good example of one thanks to Peavey's proprietary TransTube technology, which has been carried on into the Decade Too.

Many contemporary practice amps now have all sorts of digital wizardry and speaker setups that allow them to get closer to the sounds of bigger and more expensive gear in a way that is impressively versatile. Not to mention the onboard effects, and many of these offerings from the likes of Boss, Blackstar, and Yamaha are just as affordable as the current iteration of the Decade; therefore, it can't compete in this context.

The Peavey, however, is not meant for this. Josh Homme liked it for that ‘wiry’ tone, and used it to cut through a mix along with other guitar amps, so the fact that the Decade Too, accurately recreates the lo-fi sound of practice amps from yesteryear is entirely the point.

The clean sound is quite boxy in the low end, and the Bass switch did not help with this, as it muddied things up a bit. I found the best way to use the clean was to lean into the bright nature of a tiny solid-state amp, as the high end is surprisingly nice with the High control taming it a little. The Top switch renders the sound quite a painful one in the room, but in a way that could cut nicely in a studio mix.

Contrary to this, the Bass switch is useful when the amp is working in its Saturation mode. The overdrive here is thin, so the bass boost helps round it out when used with a set of single-coil pickups, without losing too much of that cut. For even more of that piercing cut, bring in the top boost, and you'll have a sound that will sit forward in any mix, particularly effective with humbuckers.

Tune a guitar to C standard, punch in the Saturation switch, turn the preamp gain to full, and suddenly, it all starts to make a lot of sense. Doing this and blasting through some Queens Of The Stone Age riffs on my PRS S2 Custom 24 is endless fun, as every note punches through with clarity thanks to that wiry nature.

The TransTube-powered saturation sounds massive in a lo-fi way within this context, with the 3-band EQ proving fairly powerful. I found myself leaving them mostly in the middle and using the treble to cut out some fizz whilst leaving the top boost switch in to retain that clarity.

All of this can be effectively replicated through the D.I output on the back of the amp. In Peavey's words, this is a "full range old-school transformer balanced design, that's great for DAWs and IRs". My experience recording our demo of the amplifier is in line with this. Using PreSonus Studio One and adding a cab from Helix Native, I got a purposefully cutting tone from the D.I so that it can be blended nicely with the darker sound we had set up on the microphone.

A surprising discovery is just how loud the thing is. More than enough to encourage complaints from the neighbours on its own, and with the cab plugged in, the Peavey Decade Too could easily keep up with a drummer in a rehearsal room.

It's not a sound that can compete in a modern context, but the Decade Too does what it sets out to do - recreate the original Peavey Decade, with some extra tone-shaping features. As a recording utility to help a part cut, a way to get you closer to the QOTSA sound, it's mission is accomplished.

Verdict

If you are looking for a practice amp, to, you know, practice on - don’t buy the Peavey Decade Too. There are better options for this use, that are, in some cases, more affordable to boot.

Still, even with this in mind, I couldn’t help but have fun with this little box and its surprisingly loud extension cab. Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and it took me back to my first Stagg amplifier and the old Peavey Decades I would go on to use in university guitar tutorial rooms.

All the things that make the sound of those amplifiers unpleasant in the room add up to make it cut in a mix, which seems to be why Josh Homme took to it as his secret weapon.

Because of Josh Hommes' reverence for the original Decade, those originals are currently getting listed between $300-$400 at the time of writing. At the end of the day, despite the dated technology, things are worth what people are willing to pay for them, which makes the Decade Too an interesting proposition if you are in the market for an effective tool to get closer to an aspect of that massive Queens of the Stone Age sound.

Guitar World Verdict: What the Peavey Decade Too does is recreate the sound of an old style of practice amp, warts and all, but with some handy extra features for further tonal sculpting. If you're a Josh Homme fan or would like a quirky studio tool to add some cut to your mixes, the Peavey Decade Too is worth a look.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Guitar World

Sweetwater

The Guitar Geek

Queens of the Stone Age's multi-instrumentalist Troy Van Leeuwen's penchant for Fenders is well-documented. His team-up with the company on the Troy Van Leeuwen Jazzmaster is a testament to that, not to mention his offset-heavy rig. However, one guitar you won't see him in public with? A Strat.

“I'm a Tele, Jazzmaster guy when it comes to Fenders,” he tells Premier Guitar. “I have a Strat at home. It just never felt like it worked with the Queens. There's something about it – it's a little too ordinary.

“I guess the Tele is a little bit more funky to me," he explains. "And this is definitely like [a] wide range of tones. I just need more colors like that, that are a little bit more interesting than a Strat.”

Van Leeuwen goes on to say that he also had a Les Paul stint, however, much like the Strat, “They do a thing that really is that thing, and I can only use it for a couple songs.”

The alt-rock maverick had previously spoken about how he initially fell in love with Jazzmasters – a love affair that resulted from an unfortunate incident. Van Leeuwen had broken his collarbone on the left side in a motorcycle accident, just a few weeks before the band was due to play a festival.

“I didn’t want to cancel the tour, so I really had to scramble to find something that would work,” he said on the No Guitar Is Safe podcast.

“I figured I’d try some different things. I had a ’62 Jazzmaster, so I got a special strap for it – a saxophone strap, which I could put over my right shoulder – and that guitar, being a lot lighter than my Les Paul, got me through the tour unscathed.”

In other QOTSA news, the band recently become the first to play the Paris Catacombs for a new live film.

Queens of the Stone Age have just released their latest sonic adventure, Alive in the Catacombs. It finds Josh Homme’s outfit stripping back an intriguing mix of songs for an acoustic film captured in the depths of the Paris Catacombs.

However, discussing his songwriting approach with Uncut reveals that these songs likely started in such bare-bones formats as they're presented here – pun intended. Homme believes every guitarist should sow the seeds of an idea on an acoustic guitar before even thinking about going electric.

“Most of our songs start by sitting on the edge of the bed, playing acoustic guitar. If something works there, it works everywhere,” he believes (via Guitar.com). And so peeling off the layers of their songs for a rare audience with the dead wasn’t a daunting task; it’s one they were made for.

“There’s been talk of secret meetings and late-night raves, but we’re the first people to legally play there,” Homme says of their performance in the French capital's unique underground maze of ossuaries, which holds the remains of more than six million people. “The catacombs is the star of the show, so all the decisions we made were about respecting the space.

“You can’t plug anything in – we had an electric piano that was hooked up to a car battery. The floors were wet in some areas like you were in this living, breathing thing. It felt like we’re not supposed to roll out the hits, we’re not supposed to play loud.”

The songs presented during the film – we won’t give the game away for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet – certainly show QOTSA in a very different, slightly morbid light.

While watching, this writer – already a huge admirer of Homme’s lyricism – found himself awe-inspired by his wordplay and the emotional depth of the songs all over again. Writing in a far less electrified and gung-ho manner, he believes, helps those elements shine.

“I feel that [in this setting] these songs really change their intensity,” he muses. “When things are stripped away, lyrics step forward, emotions run much hotter and higher. We’re a band that always had a lot of emotion on its sleeve, but somehow we’re not as known for our softer side as maybe we should be. I could not have enjoyed it more.”

Homme's unique approach to mastering the guitar can also be attributed to the often left-field ideas he cleverly weaves into more catch-all song formats. As a guitarist, he was polka first rather than rock.

“I took guitar lessons from nine years old till about 11, and I never learned any barre chords, all I've ever learned was oompah oompah,” he told Q last year. “I was always hearing sounds in my head. That's why I wanted to play guitar... to get that out.

“When left to my own devices, there are no rules. There are blind spots [referring to his guitar playing] that I know nothing about, but I can play you something that is ultimately off-kilter.

“I wouldn't have had the chance to find who I am and do the right thing the wrong way if I hadn't had that beginning from polka.”

The band’s ringleader is typically outspoken, his on-stage attitude so often swaggering backstage with him after every encore. But when he got to play George Harrison’s one-of-a-kind Rosewood Telecaster, he was rendered speechless.

Queens of the Stone Age: Alive in the Catacombs is out now.

Head to QOTSA to download or stream the film.

NAMM 2025: While Josh Homme isn't known for revealing too much about the gear he uses to craft his signature (and much-debated) tone, four years ago, he disclosed something that set tongues wagging – and sent many flocking to second-hand gear stores: his “secret weapon,” the Peavey Decade.

According to Homme, the compact and modest amp from the ’80s plays a vital role in achieving the tone imprinted on his repertoire, including No One Knows from Songs for the Deaf. Fast forward to 2025 – specifically NAMM 2025 – and Peavey has just launched a revamped, Josh Homme–inspired version of the amp: the Decade Too.

Weighing only 12 lbs and delivering 10 watts of “pure solid-state power,” this small guitar combo amp was designed in collaboration with Homme, with the intention of being practice room, recording- and stage-ready.

As the name suggests, it takes inspiration from the Peavey Decade's dedicated Normal and Saturation inputs, 3-band EQ, and Pre/Post gain knobs – but Homme requested a few enhancements to better suit modern players.

These include elevating the 3-band EQ with Bass and Treble boost switches, adding footswitch control to toggle between the Normal and Saturation channels, as well as an effects loop.

Peavey, alongside Homme, have also made this new version into a proper studio amp by adding a transformer-balanced XLR speaker-simulated direct out, complete with a level control and ground lift switch, that enables silent recording no matter how much you crank the amp.

And to hone in on the quintessential ’80s tone, it's also loaded with an all-new 8”, 8 Ohm internal Celestion driver voiced “like the best” of the Rola speakers used between 1980 and 1983, guaranteeing it packs a punch.

However, if the amp's volume isn't enough for you, there are also dual 1/4” speaker outputs for connecting to various cabinets – including the newly launched 1x8” Decade Too Extension Cab, which promises “superior projection and enhancement.”

For pedal enthusiasts, Peavey has also packed the original Peavey Decade tone into a pedal that guarantees a “faithful recreation” of the sought-after amp. Emulating the amp’s iconic features, the pedal includes a switchable Saturation “channel” function, Pre and Post gain controls, the three-band EQ, and a hard bypass switch with an anti-click circuit.

The Peavey Decade Too and the extension cabinet, priced at $299.99 and $149.99 respectively, are currently available for pre-order from partner retailers – and, at that price, they’re going to make a significant dent in the sky-high asking prices of listings in the vintage market.

The price of the Peavey Decade pedal hasn’t been revealed yet, but we expect more information over the next few days.

For more information about the Decade Too, head to Peavey.

At 52, with a heavy bass slung over his shoulder, a half-burned cigarette dangling from his lips, and a maniacal grin accented by a raggedy goatee, Nick Oliveri is a throwback to a bygone era. He’s never been afraid to speak his mind, but he’s earned that through years of throat-stomping music.

Despite his explosive reputation, Oliveri speaks with a weary tone, and one can’t help but get the idea that he’s seen too much. “Unfortunately,” he says of the members of the halcyon Palm Desert rock scene, “we all got old. But we’re still playing; we’re still at it.”

According to Oliveri, the fact that he’s still at it is probably only because he, like many of his old pals, “weren’t afraid to leave the desert.” Adding, “That’s why we did so well; we weren’t really accepted in the early days, so we weren’t afraid. That didn’t change until later, to be honest.”

The post-desert success Oliveri alludes to came after Kyuss, an iconic cult act he co-founded in 1987 while he was perched beside fellow hellraiser Josh Homme, who asked him to join Queens of the Stone Age. Oliveri’s impact was immediate, as Rated R (2000) and Song for the Deaf (2002) clocked in as iconic.

But an epic fall-out ensued, leading to Oliveri’s departure in 2004 and the end of what he calls the band’s “definitive lineup.” A lot has been said regarding his departure, but Oliveri claims there’s no bad blood. “There’s been bad times, good times, and great times,” he says.

“We accomplished more, I think, than we ever accomplished outside of knowing each other within other bands. So, I don’t know… I’ve got nothing bad to say about the dude. We’ve had our moments; it’s all water under the bridge, and everything’s good.”

For better or worse, Oliveri will forever be tied to Josh Homme. But that hasn’t stopped him from creating music outside of that sphere over the last twenty years. “I write about things going on,” he says. “I don’t always like the things going on around me, but I just try to have fun and stay happy.”

Despite the message of hope, when Oliveri speaks of the future, there’s heaviness in his voice and a tinge of sadness behind his eyes. “That’s all we can do these days. I’ve thought a lot about death lately. A lot of good people have died, and so have friends of mine. A lot of good people; it’s sad.”

“What are you gonna do? We are getting older, but I still make music. I still love it. I’m still at it. I still want to keep going.”

You were a key member of the early desert rock scene, though it was really a ‘scene’ back then, was it?

“I don’t remember a whole lot of it. [Laughs] We partied quite a bit, but it was fun and great. From what I remember, it was a really good time. But there really wasn’t a scene per se… it was, for us, all in a small town. But it wasn’t like a thing that people came from out of town to come see years and years later. And now, it’s pretty much gone.”

What do you remember about the early hours of Kyuss?

“I remember in 1987, I was just a little kid. Those guys were even younger. Chris Cockrell was the original bass player. I played rhythm guitar, and we played our first party at a house on Primrose Avenue near Palm Desert Middle School. It was a house party; we got our set together like we were gonna dazzle some people or whatever.”

So, you were confident.

“We were gonna rock out and have some fun. We were actually kind of nervous and scared that people weren’t gonna like us. But people did like us, and I remember John [Garcia] was scared to come in and sing because he was kind of shy. He sat in the car reviewing lyrics while we played this long instrumental, and he came in. I remember they liked what we were doing so much that they made us play twice. [Laughs]”

By 1991, you had your legs under you and recorded Wretch. And in 1992, you recorded Blues for the Red Sun, but you left soon after.

“I think it’s important that we broke up and that I left after Blues for the Red Sun and have Scott Reeder come in and play bass for Welcome to Sky Valley and for …And The Circus Leaves Town. Had the band stayed together, I don’t know what it would have been… who knows?”

Do you ever think about what might have been?

“Well, Kyuss wasn’t big until the fans made it big by trading the MP3s and shit like that, you know. They were trading cassettes and CDs; it’s funny because not a whole lot of people liked the band back then, so I didn’t regret it then. We had no way of knowing. The fans took it further than the band ever took it. And so, who knows what it would have been… maybe it would have crumbled, maybe it would have gotten big. I don’t think people were ready for it back then.”

You were only in Kyuss with Josh Homme for a short time, but he called you to join Queens of the Stone Age in 1998. You must have gotten on well.

“Yeah, well, when Queens started, Josh called me up and said, ‘Hey Dude, I was you to play bass.’ And I was living in Austin, Texas, and I said, ‘Well, send me a cassette; I want to hear it.’ He sent me a cassette, and it was like Mexicola, and things like that. It sparked my interest, so I told him, ‘I’ll come down and do it.’ I liked it.”

Your era of Queens produced some of the band’s best-loved music. Can you explain why that is?

“It was cool. We just kind of started like that, like old friends talking on the phone about music, and it just started that way. I said, ‘Sure, man, I’ll come on down. We’ll try it out and see what happens.’ We went for it, and it was immediately good, felt comfortable, and we all had that same hunger for belief in what we were doing. That mindset is why I think we did something good… we definitely were into it.”

Did you ever stop being into it?

“I mean… I’m still into it. It’s a good band and there’s good songs. We brought it, you know? We really cared about it, cared for it, loved it, and had pride in it. I think that’s a starting point for any band to succeed. Whether it be within themselves, national, or international success, you’ve got to give a shit about it. We really did, and I still love it. So, what the hell, you know?”

Paint a picture of what it was like to record albums like Rated R and Songs for the Deaf.

“Man, we had so much fun recording those records. We were crazy, and we were young. We’d do mushrooms, and then the next day, we’d be drinking or whatever. We’d be doing different things, being creative, wild, and crazy, and just having fun. We were young, wild, and crazy, and that led to some great moments on those records.”

Is there anything that sticks out most musically?

“What I remember most is a lot of good times and just listening back to them. And when I do listen to them, it reminds me of some great moments, like leaving the studio at seven in the morning after being there all night. And instead of going home, we’d go to this hotel down the street from Sound City in LA, and we’d go have more beer, smoke, and sit there and listen to what we had from a CD, just taking in what we’d accomplished that day. We’d make notes and just keep going until it was done. I’m still living that way, dammit. [Laughs]”

There has been plenty of speculation about your departure from Queens of the Stone Age. What is the truth of the matter?

“A lot of different things happened. We did a lot of things in a short period of time, you know, in a five-year period. We did a lot of records, a lot of non-stop touring, and a lot of side projects, which is crazy. We kind of burnt out on each other, I guess… I guess you could say that.”

Are you and Josh still friends?

“We still pick up where we left off whenever we see each other. We still talk on the phone. We’re still good friends. Josh is a good dude, and we get along well. I wish him all the success in the world; I just wish he’d take Mondo Generator on tour with them. [Laughs]”

So, things weren’t as volatile between you and Josh as they were made out to be?

“Well, we’ve had our ups and downs. We’re like brothers, you know? We, like I said, got burned out on each other. We spent too much time together. So, being creative, you know, we spent a lot of time together, and we bounced off each other great. We made a lot of good music and had a lot of good times and laughter. I’d write apart, he’d write apart, and I’d come up with something for it, and we’d start laughing because it’s rad, you know? But there’s been bad moments as well. And there’s been great moments, you know, on tour, swapping girls, being crazy, and having fun.”

There’s a case to be made that Queens has never been the same without you. If given the chance, would you rejoin?

“I would do it, but it’s not my decision anymore. It’s Josh’s, and, well, I don’t really see him giving up what he’s got for bringing a partner in for his thing. He’s already gotten moving well on his own now. I would do it, but that’s… that’s on him.”

Do you agree that your era of Queens is the definitive era?

“I think we kind of peaked out. I mean… there’s a thing with the band, you know, you had Dave Grohl on drums, Mark Lanegan on vocals, I’m on bass and vocals, and Josh is on guitar and vocals. I think when you have a band like that going, it’s kind of hard to do better, you know? You can’t, really… there’s no way you can continue something like that with different members. I don’t see it as possible. I think that’s the main choice for most people as their definitive lineup because it’s the best lineup there was. It’s the best band I ever played in. I’ve yet to play in a band of such greatness and be surrounded by such greatness.”

Where would you be now if you hadn’t had that experience?

“Having to really up my game to be there with them got me better on my instrument real fast. So yeah, that’s definitely the definitive lineup for me. Great band, and the best band I ever played in.”

Has your bass rig changed much since your Kyuss and Queens days?

“I play through all different kinds of stuff. I collect amps like a carpenter collects tools. [Laughs] I don’t know… I like pedals, and I play through Acoustic amps, Orange cabinets, Ampegs – all that stuff is tried and true. It sounds good, turns up, and can take punishment.”

Is there a particular bass that’s served you well?

“I’ve got a Fender Precision bass. It fits my style, so I play that; they feel right to me. I use Quarter Pounder pickups by Seymour Duncan because they have great output and give me a great tone. And I always use Ernie Ball strings and shit like that. I don’t know… I use whatever strings they give me. It’s pretty fun, and just hours of good times, making some noise, going through different pedals, like envelope filters, delays, fuzz and distortion pedals, and shit. I love all of it, like any other guitar freak, but I play bass. [Laughs]”

Since leaving Queens, you’ve kept at it with varying levels of success. What’s the key to staying afloat as a career musician after leaving a big band as you have?

“It’s stressful. Shit, I don’t know what would make it better. Well, a lot of things will make it better, but I don’t know what’s actually realistic. It seems to be all on the internet now, and everybody’s the same. There’s gonna be no more rock stars; we’re like the last of a dying breed of rockers that come from when there was still a record business out there. It’s a different game we’re playing and very tough.”

Do you ever regret getting into the music business?

“I don’t know… I’m just trying to stay afloat, man. It’s been a hard road with the change that’s happened in the past 20 years. But I’m still here. I’m still at it. I do it for myself, my friends, and my bandmates and because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to do anything else.”

• For more information on Nick Oliveri’s tour dates and releases head to Mondo Generator

Former Queens of the Stone Age bassist Nick Oliveri is best known for his work on two of the band's seminal albums, Rated R (2000) and Songs for the Deaf (2002) – and he thinks the Josh Homme-fronted outfit has never topped the lineup that appeared on the 2002 classic.

“I think we kind of peaked out,” he says in an upcoming Guitar World interview. "I mean… there's a thing with the band, you know, you had Dave Grohl on drums, Mark Lanegan on vocals, I'm on bass and vocals, and Josh is on guitar and vocals. I think when you have a band like that going, it's kind of hard to do better, you know?

“There's no way you can continue something like that with different members. I don't see it as possible. I think that's the main choice for most people as their definitive lineup, because it's the best lineup there was. It's the best band I ever played in. I've yet to play in a band of such greatness and be surrounded by such greatness.”

As to whether he would ever rejoin Queens of the Stone Age, Oliveri admits, “I would do it, but it's not my decision anymore. It's Josh's, and, well, I don't really see him giving up what he's got for bringing a partner in for his thing. He's already gotten moving well on his own now. I would do it, but that's on him.”

Despite all that ensued, Oliveri reveals that he and Homme are still on good terms.

“We still pick up where we left off whenever we see each other. We still talk on the phone. We're still good friends. Josh is a good dude, and we get along well. I wish him all the success in the world.”

Queens of the Stone Age have canceled a host of tour dates as frontman Josh Homme has been rushed to surgery.

In a statement posted to social media, the band wrote that “every effort was made to push through and play for you, but it is no longer an option to continue”, since Homme is required to return to the US “immediately” for emergency surgery.

“Queens are gutted we aren’t able to play for you,” the post’s caption reads. “We apologize for any inconvenience and share in your frustration and disappointment.”

QOTSA’s remaining European headline shows and festival slots scheduled for July have all been canceled as a result of Homme’s surgery.

These include Festival Jardin Sonore, Pohoda Festival, Zitadelle Spandau, Colours of Ostrava, METAstadt, Electric Castle Festival, SRC Salata and Athens Rocks.

A full list of canceled dates can be found below, and in the band’s Instagram post.

As per the post, ticket holders for those headline shows will be contacted directly with further information. Those who hold tickets for festivals are advised to visit specific festival websites for updated information.

The band have provided no further details regarding Homme’s condition, and whether there are any plans to cancel QOTSA’s shows that are slated to take place in August.

In 2023, Homme revealed he had been diagnosed with cancer in 2022, and had undergone successful treatment.

Visit Queens of The Stone Age’s website to keep up to date with future developments.

In other Homme news, the band’s frontman recently revealed how learning polka as a kid developed his off-kilter guitar playing style.

Queens of The Stone Aged canceled July dates

• 10/07 – Festival Jardin Sonore – Vitrolles, FR
• 13/07 – Pohoda Festival – Trencin, SK
• 16/07 – Zitadelle Spandau – Berlin, DE
• 17/07 – Colours of Ostrava – Ostrava, CZ
• 18/07 – METAstadt – Vienna, AS
• 20/07 – Electric Castle Festival – Cluj, RO
• 23 & 24/07 – SRC Salata – Zagreb, HR
• 27/07 – Athens Rocks – Athens, GR

In a recent interview on Q with Tom Power, Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme revealed how his distinct guitar playing style can be traced back to learning polka in childhood.

“I took guitar lessons from nine years old till about 11, and I never learned any barre chords... all I've ever learned was oompah oompah,” said Homme.

“I was really frustrated by it, and so it drove me to either give up guitar or start writing music. So at nine or 10, I was always hearing sounds in my head. You know, you're walking down the street and that's at a rhythm, and so I was always singing along to my own soundtrack. That's why I wanted to play guitar... to get that out.”

Coming from such rigid rules led Homme to rebel and push the envelope of his guitar playing. “When left to my own devices, I was like 'fine'. I'll have none of that. There are no rules. There are blind spots [referring to his guitar playing] that I know nothing about, but I can play you something that is ultimately off-kilter.”

One of the reasons he started detuning was this desire to create something he had never heard before. “One of the reasons that I wanted to detune is because I wanted something that was mine, and there was no example of tuning down to B and C. There was no such thing.

“Maybe Black Sabbath were detuning some songs, but I'd never heard them before. I was just a kid in the desert with a very small record collection, and I was like, I wonder if you just do this, what happens.” Homme's detuning “became such a thing that now there's like seven string guitars with Bs on them”.

One of Queens of the Stone Age's most popular songs, No One Knows, which arguably has Homme's most famous guitar riff, not only features the C Standard tuning but also polka's oompah rhythm.

As Homme put it, “I wouldn't have had the chance to find who I am and do the right thing the wrong way if I hadn't had that beginning from polka.”

This year is not like any other. The response to the 2023 greatest guitar solo poll nigh-on overwhelmed the administration at Guitar World. It was a record turnout, and once we collated the votes, and our editors meticulously weighed up each solo’s melodicism, influence and technical prowess, we had a truly formidable top 10 on our hands.

The number one spot will come as no surprise. This was the year that gave us this decade’s Heartbreaker, its Eruption. We might all debate the guitar solo’s place in composition, the form it should take and whether it is even necessary in the first place, but it’s not going anywhere.

The solo will outlive us all, and this top 10 presents documentary evidence that the solo is ever-evolving – that at its best it can tell a story, give us a sense of spectacle, and even offer a window into a player’s soul. And if it sets your head on fire, then all the better.

10. Towa Bird – Boomerang

TikTok’s Towa Bird is just going to have to savor the irony in charting in the top 10 guitar solos of 2023 having already declared on this very website that they are “arrogant”. But then art is all about contradictions and subverting expectations, and if you’re the sort of player who discovered the guitar then mainlined Jimi Hendrix’s recorded output, then how could you deny yourself the pleasure of a few bars on the treble clef to cut loose?

Speaking to Guitar World in June, Bird said Boomerang’s solo had to “feel like a conversation”, and you can hear that in the phrasing – it’s inviting a response. Tone-wise, Boomerang is awesome, and should be a surprise to no one that a TikTok star should make use of plugins to dial in an electric guitar sound.

“Being able to do that in the box is really helpful,” said Bird. “Throwing things into different rooms, playing it on two different guitars and then having two different distortions or fuzzes was just so fun.”

9. Big Wreck – Hangers On

Ian Thornley was never going to wake up one morning and find Mike Varney’s face pressed up against his window with a big fat contract to draft him onto the Shrapnel roster. That’s not his game. But that is not to say that he is not a formidable lead guitar player, whose solos are often essential to his songwriting, an opportunity to say what he wanted to say in verse but perhaps couldn’t find the words. 

That’s when you can let the guitar say what you couldn’t, and this solo – teased out, sparse but not minimalist – has an elliptical quality, an air of Peter Green about it. Not that it is blues, but rather that it is phrased with all due care and attention as it should be.

8. Angel Vivaldi – Six

If you’ve heard the name but have yet to experience what he sounds like on record, then Angel Vivaldi’s Six is the perfect introduction to his talents. It’s not as though it is the quintessence of his output. Vivaldi’s protean appetites have taken him all over the map, dabbling in all kinds of genres. But it’s as good as DNA and dental records for identifying the marvel with the Charvel: his style, how he addresses the electric guitar, note choice, intonation, pressure on the strings and melodic disposition. 

“Six is the truest song from a compositional, arrangement and melodic sense,” he told GW. “It’s the one that best shows my ‘signature sound,’ as they say.”

It’s fusion, rock through the blender, a melodic arc that’s a pure flight of fancy. This is the sort of thing that might come of a fever dream after spending all night night woodshedding on Joe Pinnavaia’s Truefire course with nothing but strong cheese and crackers for sustenance.

7. Matteo Mancuso – Silkroad

It’s not, ‘How can Matteo Mancuso play all of this fingerstyle?’ It’s a case of fingerstyle making all of this possible, allowing Mancuso to apply classical guitar techniques to rock and take the instrument into uncharted territory.

It’s early days but let’s be bold and call it now: Mancuso is a generational talent. The amiable Sicilian has made an audacious debut with The Journey, and Silkroad, its opening track, is a product of his adventurous musical appetites, dedication to practice and application.

The lion’s share of The Journey was performed on a Yamaha Revstar, but on Silkroad you’re hearing a Pacifica, and like the physical Silk Road, this connects cultures, a fusion of east and west, a taste of something fresh on the palate that we have never experienced before. Suggested wine pairing: Frank Cornelissian Susucaru rosato, served chilled.

6. Nita Strauss – Surfacing (feat. Marty Friedman)

The undisputed shred heavyweight collab of the year lived up to the hype. Even for Hurricane Nita, who plays with Alice Cooper, has played with Demi Lovato, and can play most of us under the table, this was a moment where it came full-circle.

Strauss is not the first to have pored over Friedman’s Exotic Metal Guitar DVD for insight but few of us get the opportunity to send a track by way of the G.O.A.T. and engage in some back and forth for – arguably – the instrumental rock guitar track of the year.

Strauss says the experience taught her a lot about telling a story with the instrument, note choice and how to make melodies pop out. It made her a better player.

“This collaboration was such an education for me, as a sort-of young guitar player at the foot of the master!” she said. “The first metal song I ever heard had Marty playing guitar on it. We fleshed out the whole concept together. I sent him some riffs and then he sent back this crazy song with his own ideas.”

5. Avenged Sevenfold – Nobody

If the riff to Nobody was so simple it almost sounded like the push-button drone of a synth, then Synyster Gates' efflorescence of sweep-picked arpeggios offers a complex counterpoint, the audio equivalent of pairing a child’s crayon drawing of a donkey with a machine-learning algorithm. And it totally works, closing out the track with a masterclass in lead guitar as narrative device.

This virtuosity is a signature move of Synyster Gates, and is such that we have come to expect it. But sometimes you’ve got to sit back and admire it, to appreciate anew. Just imagine if this was your very first song you wanted to learn on guitar – to the exclusion of all other songs – the length of time it would take between learning the riff and the solo. Well, it could take years, maybe never.

4. Queens of the Stone Age – Paper Machete

That players spend so long trying to sound like Queens of the Stone Age, picking up fuzz pedals, overdrives, taking solid-state practice amps out of cold storage is all well and good. It’s good, healthy tone-seeking fun. But just so long as we all don’t underestimate how difficult it is to actually play like them. Y’know, that’s the important bit. 

As with Josh Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen’s tone, so it is with their arrangements, with riffs you’ve got to count, informing a groove you have to somehow innately feel, and then you’ve got solos like TVL’s here that are as good as copy-protected. 

Van Leeuwen’s phrasing makes it sound as though it has been made up on the spot, a work of high-flying studio improv, but the note choices are all on point, in dialog with the tricksy melody, and tonally… Well, give it some neck pickup and a Univox Super-Fuzz and see how you go.

3. Red Devil Vortex – More Luck Than Brains

Red Devil Vortex sound like they are named after some energy drink that had to be removed off the market for our cardiovascular integrity’s sake, and listening to More Luck Than Brains and then trying to get those pull-offs just right on the seven-string guitar, tricksy tapping and all, might similarly give you palpitations. 

Luís Kalil’s solo starts with the difficulty set to hard before taking it to advanced/expert, stepping on the Whammy for squeal-good kicks and sending us out to the hotdog stand with that ridiculously adroit legato style of his.

Watching the playthrough vid that the Brazilian virtuoso shot, we were taken by that signature reverse tapping move – a little theater goes a long way – but also a cleanliness next to godliness when it comes to those pull-offs to open strings. Check it out and see if you can play it. Just remember to breathe.

2. Mammoth WVH – Take a Bow

In any other year, this would have to take number one spot. Take a Bow is a solo that has everything and then some, and it is the ‘then some’ that is remarkable – the legend, the history that brought us here.

Because this is a solo brought to you courtesy of rock guitar’s Excalibur, the Frankenstein MacGuyver’d into being by Eddie Van Halen, and his son, Wolfgang. It is a solo that gives you the impression that two-handed tapping was taught at the dinner table between main course and dessert, or that it runs in the family.

But, of course, there were no tapping lessons at the Van Halen dinner table; there was conversation like any other family. Of course these skills don’t run in the family; they are developed over the years. They are a creative choice. 

And while it might be a no-brainer that WVH should use EVH’s gear in the studio, it’s Wolfgang’s daring creative choice to deploy these tapping skills on a track that’s as epic and ambitious as anything he has written.

Given the context, the weight of history, that makes it all the more gutsy and poignant. Oh, and it’s just nice to hear that guitar in action again. Take a Bow is a real gift to Mammoth WVH’s audience, and to his father’s.

1. Extreme – Rise

The moment Rise hit YouTube, announcing Extreme’s then forthcoming studio album, Six, after 15 long years, Nuno Bettencourt’s phone lit up with messages from his peers. Legends like Steve Lukather and Brian May got in touch with him.

The messages were thank yous – a bit odd, but the penny soon dropped. They were thanking Bettencourt for bringing back an art that was lost, not just the act of a guitar solo – they’ve always been here, always will be – but the art of performing them.

That was what made the difference, said Bettencourt. It was the presentation. There is a case to be made that Rise isn’t necessarily the best solo on the album. There is an abundance of audacity on Six, the sound of Bettencourt on a tear and in the form of his life. But seeing him perform it, evidence before our very eyes that it wasn’t punched in or trickery we were hearing, made it all the more visceral.

As guitar solos go, this is a nuclear strike, a supernova. This is the guitar solo as pop-cultural event, as though the excitement of a sold-out stadium rock show could be harvested, reconfigured and reappropriated for 55 seconds of God-level shredding.

Shredding is an inadequate word but it’s what we’ve got. Best solo of 2023? Best solo of the 21st century so far, from rock guitar’s most imaginative, most effervescent lead stylist.

You might remember Funny Little Boxes for its excellent 1991 pedal, which delivers the sound of Pearl Jam’s Ten in a box. Well, now, FLB founder Andy Ilgunas and YouTube channel Let’s Play All’s Matt Webster have once again collaborated, with their sights set on recreating one of modern rock’s most revered, yet hard-to-approximate guitar tones: Queens of the Stone Age.

That’s quite a blanket description given Josh Homme’s blueprint has graced eight studio albums and dozens of side-project releases. So which is the Skeleton Key gunning for? 

Well, it’s a fitting name, because the answer is simultaneously all of them and none of them. Instead, this op-amp-based distortion is designed to capture the overall vibe of Josh Homme’s clandestine, cleaner-than-you-might-think sound: part overdrive, part fuzz, all down-tuned and instantly recognisable character. 

There are three controls, and while you might expect some esoteric descriptions, FLB has kept it to simple tradition: Gain, Volume and Tone. The Skeleton Key features one input, one output, and a power jack, and to cap it off, has enlisted official QOTSA artist Boneface to create the Skeleton Key Graphic that adorns the front. 

We fed the Skeleton Key humbucker pickups and single coils, with our guitars tuned to C standard, drop C and standard tuning, and the results are oddly uncanny. Crucial to the Skeleton Key’s sound is its gain range, which, while labelled distortion is closer in terms of saturation levels to a heavy overdrive.

However there’s a layer of aggression that takes it away from sounding like another OG OD circuit. First, it’s dynamic, responding to our guitar’s volume with versatility.

Second, you’ll get a totally usable range of sounds out of the full travel of the controls – even with everything maxed out it maintains its clarity and throaty growl thanks to it never reaching white-hot molten gain levels.

It’s actually quite a strange experience, in that with the output pushing at a decent level and beyond, the QOTSA flavour remains throughout. This leaves you with the tone and gain controls as your seasoning without leaving the desert.

Specs

• PRICE: $123/£99
• ORIGIN: UK
• TYPE: Distortion pedal
• CONTROLS: Gain, Tone, Volume
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output
• POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied)
• CONTACT: Funny Little Boxes

By now, it seems like the “tone is in the hands” school of thought is a widely accepted theory of guitar playing. In a nutshell: no matter what gear an individual plays through, they will always sound like themselves, owing to the unique nuances in feel and touch between every guitarist.

We’ve seen countless artists supply anecdotes about playing their peers’ gear only to sound exactly like themselves – and as if we needed any more evidence to support the tone hands argument, Queens of the Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen has now provided another.

Speaking to MusicRadar, Van Leeuwen was quizzed about Funny Little Boxes’ Skeleton Key – a new overdrive pedal that supposedly nails the QOTSA tone – and asked whether that one pedal would be enough to capture the band’s heralded sound.

Naturally, Van Leeuwen was skeptical (“There’s not one pedal that does it, so good luck!”) and went on to offer his own perspective on sound by observing, “My philosophy is that a lot of the way you sound as a guitar player is in your fingers.”

To prove his point, Van Leeuwen recalled the time QOTSA were visited by Billy Gibbons – who appeared on the band’s 2006 single Burn the Witch – and reflected that the ZZ Top icon still sounded exactly like himself while playing through an unassuming, off-brand digital amp simulator.

“When we worked with Billy Gibbons, he brought some gear to the studio,” Van Leeuwen explained. “This was our first meeting. I don’t even think it was a Line 6 POD; it was some off-brand amp simulator, and we were just like, ‘Yo, plug into one of our amps!’ 

“But the funny thing is, we heard him playing through this thing and it was like, ‘Wow! It sounds like fuckin’ Billy Gibbons!’”

Of course, Gibbons doesn't play through this unnamed amp simulator all the time, so the fact he was able to harness the individualistic feel he gets from his various Marshall tube amps from what seems to be a budget digital product is pretty strong evidence in favor of the fact that, yes, tone is in the hands.

But Gibbons is hardly fussy – after all, he gets his pedals on Amazon – and his favorite brand starts at $15.

Van Leeuweun went on, “Billy Gibbons wouldn't sound like Queens ever because he just sounds like he does and it doesn’t matter what he uses. 

“Yeah, we could go through all this gear, all this stuff, and there are a lot of secrets we’ve been keeping over the years, but I think that’s the fun part, the magic of being an individual. It’s about teaching people to get their own sound. That’s where I’m coming from.”

As mentioned above, this is by no means the first time a high-profile player has argued that tone truly is in the hands – and you can be assured it won’t be the last, either.

Another guitarist whose own opinions on the matter would align with Van Leeuwen’s is Steve Lukather, who recently affirmed “there’s no magic guitar, just magic people”. “I’ve played Eddie Van Halen’s guitars, Jeff Beck’s guitars,” he told Guitarist, “and I sound like me.”

Bettencourt would also agree. Speaking to Rick Beato earlier this year, the Extreme virtuoso said he played Eddie Van Halen’s guitar rig in a bid to sound like his hero to no avail: “[Playing Van Halen’s rig] was the big[gest] bitch slap of all time when you realize, ‘Holy shit, it’s all about you. It’s all about your fingers.’”

The list goes on: John Mayer once made an Epiphone Les Paul and Roland practice amp sound like a PRS Silver Sky/Dumble combo, while Joe Bonamassa told Guitar Player that a player’s individual touch was more important than gear.

YouTube channel Let’s Play All and UK pedal builder Funny Little Boxes have announced a new Queens of the Stone Age-inspired distortion pedal, the Skeleton Key, which aims to bottle the essence of Josh Homme’s guitar tone in a single box.

Now, admittedly, the secrets of Homme’s guitar tone remain closely guarded and much debated. 

Indeed, when it does eventually see the light of day, we suspect the information will be drip fed to the public over many years, in the manner of a UFO cover-up, lest we lose our collective minds. 

Fortunately, the minds behind the Skeleton Key (namely YouTuber Matt Webster and pedal builder Andy Ilgunas) are a little less fussed about replicating the exact circuits and are more focused on creating the sound itself, in a simple, highly-usable one-box format. 

“Let us be clear, this is not a clone of [the Peavey Decade],” writes Ilgunas in a Funny Little Boxes blog (in the process, distinguishing it from the likes of Acorn Amplifier’s Solid State preamp). 

“Whereas it is verified that the Decade has been used throughout the making of several QOTSA records, the fact is it is only a single part of the sound as a whole and I remain unconvinced that the Decade alone can truly capture the QOTSA sound.”

Instead, what we have is an op-amp distortion circuit that is designed to pair with humbuckers and down-tunings and specifically voiced to nail the QOTSA tone of tracks like No One Knows and Go With The Flow.

There’s no frippery here: controls are limited to Gain, Tone and Volume and it runs only on 9V DC negative PSU (no battery option). However, sometimes simple is best and listening to the Let’s Play All demo, the result is a thoroughly convincing take on the Homme rhythm sound.

Perhaps equally impressively, Ilgunas and Webster also tracked down and commissioned Queens of the Stone Age’s go-to artist, Boneface, to contribute artwork and control labels for the unit. All of which means the Skeleton Key doesn’t just sound like the band’s output, it looks like it, too.

This velvety distortion goodness comes in at a nice price, too, with the Skeleton Key costing £99 (approx. $125). 

The ’Key is actually the second collaboration from Ilgunas and Webster. Let’s hope the duo can repeat the trick after the acclaimed Funny Little Boxes 1991 pedal – a Pearl Jam-inspired unit designed to nail the tones from the Seattle band’s iconic debut album, Ten. 

For more information and to pre-order the Skeleton Key, head to Funny Little Boxes. 

Josh Homme has revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer last year.

In a new interview with Revolver, the Queens of the Stone Age frontman spoke about the diagnosis he received in 2022, from which he says he will make a full recovery.

He also called his diagnosis “the cherry on top of an interesting time period”, following a series of legal battles with his ex-wife, Brody Dalle.

As per Revolver, Homme didn’t reveal any specifics regarding his diagnosis, but confirmed surgery to remove the cancer was successful. He is currently still recovering, and feels occasional pain.

“I never say it can't get any worse. I never say that, and I wouldn't advise it. But I do say it can get better," Homme reflected. "Cancer is just the cherry on top of an interesting time period, you know? 

“I'm extremely thankful that I'll get through this, and I'll look back at this as something that's fucked up – but will have made me better,” he added. “I'm cool with that. There's a lot of stuff I want to do. And there's a lot of people I want to do that with.”

Later on in the conversation, Homme reflected on the mechanisms that helped him deal with the various issues he’s faced over the years, saying he found solace in his music.

“I've got nothing against therapy. I just don't go because I play [music] instead,” he offered. “Over the last couple years, I've done a lot of therapy, but at the end of the day, I understand how to proceed, moving forward with the religion that I use – music.”

Though Homme described the past few years as the ”darkest” period of his life, he put a positive spin on his experiences, saying they’ll help inform the next chapter of his life.

“This has been the darkest four years of my life,” he said. “But that’s okay, too. Even though all that has occurred and smashed my old life to pieces, those pieces I’ve been able to build into a ship that’s about to launch.”

In part, that “ship that’s about to launch” will take the form of Queens of the Stone Age’s eighth studio album, In Times New Roman – the band’s first effort in five years, which arrives this week (June 16).

“I think this is the first time I didn't want to make a record,” Homme admitted to Revolver, “but I was dealing with a lot of stuff in my personal life. We recorded a lot of stuff. I think I was doing it because when I'm in trouble, this is what I do. This is where I go to get right.”

Hello, and welcome to a new Spotify playlist-embiggened Essential Guitar Tracks. As you may well know, every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Our goal is to give you an overview of the biggest tracks, our editor’s picks and anything you may have missed. We’re pushing horizons and taking you out of your comfort zone – because, as guitarists, that’s something we should all be striving for in our playing. 

So, here are our highlights from the past seven days… now with a Spotify playlist (scroll to the bottom for the latest additions)!

Queens of the Stone Age – Emotion Sickness

QOTSA’s long-awaited new album will reportedly give us “a sonic forum in which to congregate” (not as we first read it, conjugate). Emotion Sickness is a harmony-laden sweetener – there’s a twisted riff that recalls Rocket From The Crypt’s On A Rope, some beautiful, bleary slide work and a dreamy, ’70s LA rock chorus suggesting Josh Homme’s new direction is more Eagles than, err, Eagles Of Death Metal. (MP)

Nili Brosh – Lavender Mountains

It’s no secret that the Cirque du Soleil and Danny Elfman guitarist is a huge ’80s fan, but Lavender Mountains takes Nili Brosh’s love of feelgood melodies and huge synth pads to new heights. There’s a breezy optimism in the Ibanez artist’s melodic sensibility that recalls George Benson and Joe Satriani here, and it’s hugely infectious. (MAB)

Tash Sultana – New York

This ode to the city that never sleeps – taken from the Australian multi-instrumentalist’s as-yet-untitled forthcoming EP – crackles with life, and is played out by an effortlessly cool solo that finds the Fender signature artist getting Gilmour-like mileage out of each note. (JM)

Dolly Parton – World on Fire

Dolly Parton is really committing to the whole rock renaissance thing she’s got going on at the moment. An original from her upcoming Rockstar LP, World on Fire is an impressively infectious rock anthem, crammed with crunchy guitars and some swashbuckling solo licks. It’s also got a very unsubtle nod to Queen’s We Will Rock You, which certainly helps. (MO)

Maya Ongaku – Something in the Morning Rain

Tokyo three-piece Maya Ongaku should be prescribed as lifestyle medicine. Their relaxed blend of nature-inspired psychedelia is beautifully laced together by Tsutomu Sonoda’s silken chops. Here his playing recalls something of Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac instrumentals, albeit with a distinctively Japanese note selection. (MP)

Sevendust – Everything

The American hard-rock juggernaut rumbles on with this guttural chug-fest from baritone disciple Clint Lowery and his alt-metal brigade. It’s the blockbuster first single from the band’s 14th studio album, Truth Killer, out in July. (MAB)

Black Stone Cherry – Nervous

Recent Chapman signing Chris Robertson and his guitarist-in-crime Ben Wells lean heavily into their metal side on Nervous, dialing back the Southern-fried riffage with which they made their name and instead shooting for supersized powerchords and tense alternate-picked melody licks. (MAB)

Lava La Rue – Renegade

Singer-guitarist Lava La Rue leans into a decidedly AM-era Arctic Monkeys-flavored direction for Renegade, which is punctuated by decorative soundscapes and a speaker-smashing, modulation-drenched main hook. Oh, and that solo at the 2:10 mark absolutely slaps. (MO)

Asking Alexandria – Dark Void

Enthusiastic YouTube commentators are already hailing this new single as a return to form for the UK metalcore stalwarts, and with a raft of uber-chonk riffs and an air-punching chorus, we’re inclined to agree. (MAB)

Lake Nakoma – New Skin

One of the standout cuts from the self-titled debut album from Lake Nakoma, the new project from Alabama Shakes guitarist Heath Fogg and singer/songwriter Colin Woltmann, New Skin is a fine demonstration of the former’s formidable riff-writing acumen, complete with one of the most satisfying dirt tones we’ve heard all year. (JM)

Esben and the Witch – A Kaleidoscope 

Did you know the collective noun for butterflies is a ‘kaleidoscope’? UK shoegaze stalwarts Esben And The Witch certainly do. Indeed, they’ve written a whole song about it. And it somehow sounds appropriately delicate, too – conjuring fluttering imagery from industrial-sized servings of layered reverb and delay. (MP)

The Shredderz – Shredderz (feat. Alex Skolnick)

OK, hear us out: The Shredderz are a virtual metal band who made a deal with the devil on their path to “multi-dimensional superstardom”, signing up guitar guest stars including Gary Holt, George Lynch and, on their eponymous debut single, Testament legend Alex Skolnick. For all the song’s virtual credentials, its bruising display of palm-muted fury and sweep-picked insanity is extremely physical indeed. (MAB)

Gouge Away – Idealized

Luscious and uncomfortable chord voicings buddy up in this essential blast of noisy post-hardcore from the Florida outfit. Gorgeous tones, ugly notes: utterly compelling. (MAB)

Liam Gallagher – I Don’t Want to be a Soldier Mama, I Don’t Wanna Die

The Oasis icon’s own laid-back take on John Lennon’s 1971 track of the same name, which sees Gallagher dial up the guitar department through rumbling electric rhythms and sizzling slide licks. (MO)

Albert Hammond Jr – Old Man

A peppy single from the Strokes six-stringer’s upcoming solo offering, Melodies On Hiatus, Old Man is powered by a guitar equation that’ll be warmly familiar to any fan of that band, but its solo – a mixture of tasteful vibrato, clear melodicism and air-tight, almost chicken pickin’-like, right-hand prowess – shows why Hammond was one of the guitarists at the forefront of making rock “cool” again at the dawn of the 21st century. (JM)

Wytch Hazel – Strong Heart

Can you riff like a British proto-metal god? Can you harmonise vocals over the top? Can you then channel it all into a beautiful harmonic solo on Flying V? And can you do it all while wearing white yoga pants? No? Then I’m afraid you simply do not have what it takes to make it in UK medieval metal four-piece Wytch Hazel. “NEXT!” (MP)

30 Seconds to Mars – Stuck

Famed for their electro-rock repertoire, the Jared Leto-fronted outfit are up to their usual antics with Stuck, which marries breezy Chili Peppers-esque clean noodles with a no-nonsense chorus riff that punches with pin-point precision. (MO)

Tinariwen – Anemouhagh

The long-running, Grammy-winning Tuareg outfit continue their hot streak with this groove-focused masterclass in weaving guitar in and out of the background. If you want to dig up the roots of Mdou Moctar and Khruangbin, start here. (MAB)

Pupil Slicer – Momentary Actuality

Deploying riffs just as graphic and unsettling as their moniker, Pupil Slicer blend the math-metal of Botch with the dream-like hooks of Deftones to frankly terrifying effect. Listen with caution. (MAB)

Nothing But Thieves – Overcome

In their native UK, Nothing But Thieves are becoming a stadium-stomping mega act. Their latest single, Overcome, is built for the big stages. There’s a smattering of Born In The USA DNA in ’80s synths and keys, then there’s the anthemic themes of holding on in the face of adversity – and it’s all topped-off with the sort of widescreen guitar solo that sounds best bouncing back at you off an arena’s walls. (MP)

This Is the Kit – More Change

A gently rolling tune from the Kate Stables-fronted group's upcoming full-length, Careful Of Your Keepers. Eruption this is not, but go behind the curtains and there’s all sorts of tasty playing from Stables and guitarist Neil Smith, particularly the textural work that colors the edges of the choruses. (JM)

Lanterns on the Lake – Real Life

Radiohead drummer Philip Selway guests on this gloriously technicolor slab of indie-rock that’s powered by a woozy guitar riff and accentuated by walls of post-rock tremolo picking. (MAB)

Bruno Major – We Were Never Really Friends

Fairly heavy on the piano, We Were Never Really Friends still lets Bruno Major flex his insanely vocal lead vocabulary and jazz-y extended chord arsenal with some of the tastiest soul chops you’ll hear this week. (MO)

Hot Milk – Party on My Deathbed

Rooted in early-noughties emo but blending the rap of nu-metal and the nasty tones of modern metalcore, Party on My Deathbed is the sonic equivalent of getting a face full of cold water the morning after a night of excess. (MAB)

Queens of the Stone Age multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita has announced a new solo project called Tropical Gothclub.

The project will be launched with a self-titled studio album – due November 4 via Jack White’s Third Man Records – and has been previewed with a freewheeling lead single, Wheels within Wheels.

It truly is Fertita with no filter. Operating well outside the QOTSA wheelhouse, Wheels within Wheels delivers a series of experimental six-string sucker punches, from the moody, fuzz-drenched intro soundscapes to the crazy pitch shift-loaded solo.

By way of a whirl of layered electric guitars, which have been treated to a multitude of gain-driven effects, Fertita fills the three-minute run time with punchy riffs, sporadic upper-string bends, zany lead lines and chaotic cameos from a handful of unexpected motifs.

Of the track he decided to launch his solo project with, Fertita simply noted, “One thing can influence another on levels we don’t see. All of our experience is chemical alteration and total DNA demolition.” 

Expanding on the purpose of Tropical Gothclub as a whole, he continues with an answer that is as wild as his newest single: “Tropical Gothclub as a concept is futuristic nostalgia, going through the seven stages of escapism, understanding the subliminal messages I’ve been sending and receiving to myself, and letting fantasy take a machete to the darkest corners of my mind. I want subculture shock and volcanic rock.”

Tropical Gothclub was conceived way back in 2020, when Fertita, like many others, set up a small recording and writing space in his backyard to keep him occupied over the pandemic.

With the rare spare time, Fertita began revisiting and reviving musical ideas that he had collated from over the years, fleshing out tracks from across his prolific career.

Though he initially had no intention of releasing the music under a solo project, Fertita soon recruited The Tempermill recording studio owner Dave Feeny to help him develop the songs even further.

The result is 11 tracks that promise to create a showcase for Fertita’s “wide-ranging songcraft and visionary imagination”. And, if Wheels within Wheels is anything to go by, Tropical Gothclub certainly sounds like it could be one of Fertita’s most adventurous additions to his discography to date.

Check out the tracklist below.

1. Needles
2. Wheels Within Wheels
3. Captivated
4. Where There Is Water
5. Infernal Inside
6. No Wonder
7. Death Rattle
8. Double Blind
9. Future To Follow
10. Thunder Towards You
11. Uniform Looks

• Tropical Gothclub is available to preorder now via Third Man Records ahead of its release on November 4.

Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox's Sunday Lunch series – in each example of which the King Crimson electric guitar legend and his wife cover a hard-rock song in their kitchen – has become quite the pandemic-era tradition.

This past weekend saw the dynamic duo take on Queens of the Stone Age's hard-hitting 2002 classic, No One Knows. It's loose, freewheeling and off-the-cuff but – as always with these two – a fun watch. You can see it above.

Though they're occasionally somewhat serious – their version of Neil Young's Rockin’ In The Free World, for instance, was recorded to show support for the people of Ukraine – the Sunday Lunch covers are mainly an opportunity for Fripp (the author of a guitar solo so intricate and complicated it took one dedicated player 22 years to fully master it) and Wilcox to have some fun.

That said, though, Fripp has gone on record saying that preparing songs for the Sunday Lunch series gave him a new appreciation for the giants of hard-rock guitar.

“They’re all utterly stunning things,” he told Rolling Stone of the riffs in the songs he covers with Wilcox. “I’m blown away by the original guitarists on these tracks. Phenomenal development and playing primarily since the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Van Halen onwards. Steve Vai, Satriani, the Metallica boys… The originators of the riffs are phenomenal players."

Fripp has a history with Vai and Satriani in particular, having shared the stage with them as part of the 2004 G3 tour. 

In a recently-published interview with Guitar Player, Satriani revealed that Fripp requested complete anonymity for the G3 shows.

“When he joined up, he insisted that he not be listed, and he wanted to play before the show," Satriani said.

“He said, 'Look, don’t turn the lights on. I’m going to sit behind all the amps, and I’m going to play music as people walk into the venue and find their seats. And don’t mention my name.' It’s what he wanted to do. 

“Sometimes [bassist] Stu Hamm would play with him unannounced,” Satch continued. “He’d just come out, sit right next to Robert and he’d play along, or some of the other guys would play. It was really quite beautiful. Robert is such a wonderful human being and an incredible musician.”

A few months ago, Jane’s Addiction's bassist and guitarist – Chris Chaney and Dave Navarro – teamed up with Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins to form the supergroup NHC.

That group – sans Navarro and plus a staggering band of rock A-listers – came together on Friday, December 3 for the Bring Back The Arts benefit concert at Malibu Elementary School.

Featuring Hawkins, Chaney, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Tool drummer Danny Carey, super-producer Andrew Watt, and Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen, the ad-hoc group covered a selection of late-70s/early-80s rock classics, plus a smattering of original material from their own bands. 

Hawkins took the mic for an appropriately rowdy cover of Rod Stewart‘s Hot Legs, while Homme handled lead vocals for a rendition of Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London and, naturally, Queens of the Stone Age's Go With the Flow.

All of the musicians also came together for a cover of The Clash's 1982 mega-hit, Should I Stay Or Should I Go.

Thankfully, attendee Shaun Conrad was on hand to capture the performances, a couple which he shared excerpts from on his Instagram page.

Though each famous in their own right, many of the one-off supergroup's members have previously collaborated and/or played together, in various studio and live contexts. 

As previously mentioned, Hawkins and Chaney play together in NHC – who have released a number of new songs in recent weeks – while Smith and Watt both worked with Eddie Vedder on his forthcoming solo album, Earthling, with Watt handling production and Smith contributing drums. 

Smith, Watt and Chaney, meanwhile, will all tour the US with Vedder in February 2022 as part of his solo band.

A restraining order has been filed against Queens of the Stone Age frontman and electric guitar player Josh Homme by his family, who are accusing him of physical and verbal abuse.

The request of the order was filed on behalf of his children by his ex-wife, Brody Dalle, and stipulates that Homme must remain at least 100 yards away from his sons, Orrin and Wolf, and the family dog.

According to documents seen by TMZ, the domestic restraining order request accuses Homme of drinking in the car while his children are present, using abusive language towards Dalle and making threats towards Dalle’s boyfriend. 

He is also accused of grabbing, flicking and hitting his sons, with TMZ reporting that Orrin and Wolf are scared Homme is going to hurt them.

Speaking to TMZ, Homme’s lawyer Susan Wiesner said the singer denied the claims, and commented, “Ms. Dalle has previously brought these claims to the police, DCFS, and the presiding judge of the family law court, all of whom have declined to take any action based upon these spurious claims.”

A restraining order against Homme was filed in 2019 by Dalle – who fronts the punk rock band the Distillers – after their divorce, with Dalle claiming that he showed up drunk at her house and head-butted her.

Homme later accused Dalle of trying to get him arrested, and subsequently filed his own protection order against her, claiming that she would show up at events he attended in order to provoke him into violating her order.

Josh Homme isn't somebody who is known for giving away too many tone secrets, and instead is notorious for keeping his cards very close to his chest. Therefore, when Homme talks about anything relating to his tone, we listen.

And, thanks to a clip from Apple TV’s documentary series Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson, it’s not just any old minor tidbit that the Queens of the Stone Age guitarist is sharing – it’s his “secret weapon”.

So, what is this weapon, you ask? What’s the kit behind some of Homme’s most mesmerizing hard rock tones? Well, it’s something we’d certainly never have expected – not by a long way.

As it turns out, said secret weapon is, in fact, a Peavey Decade guitar amp. Yep, that’s right. Peavey’s modest, tiny solid-state amp from the ‘80s is behind some of the most recognizable tones in the Queens of the Stone Age repertoire.

“This is the secret weapon,” said Homme, before pulling out the Peavey. “This is a Peavey Decade. This thing is incredible.”

“This is, like, the hard rock equivalent of, ‘Who shot JFK?’” quipped Ronson in return, before Homme flexed the humble amp’s admittedly very impressive gain tones.

For those of you interested in the specs, the Decade has two input channels – Normal and Saturation – and five control knobs, with a Pre and Post Gain stage lining up alongside a three-band EQ. That’s it.

It would be easy to dismiss such a claim as nothing more than a red herring designed to send tone chasers on a wild goose chase. However, further research confirms Homme is being entirely serious, and that the Peavey Decade actually played a huge part in creating the awesome No One Knows tone.

In an old video recorded by the band’s former producer Eric Valentine  – available via Reddit – it was revealed that the Peavey Decade was used to record the stomping bass guitar lines that can be heard on the mammoth track.

“It has a really cool little saturation in there, and so it would get cool distortion and you could have it at a really low volume,” explained Valentine during the No One Knows breakdown. “It ended up being the majority of the bass sound. It’s an amazing sound.”

There you have it, folks. Who says you need the newest and most expensive gear to sound good? Sometimes, the best tones can come from the most unlikely places. It’s just a matter of finding them.

Whether for his frenzied fretting and boisterous bass work in bands like Eleven, Queens Of The Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, or for his genre-defining wizardry behind the console as a producer and engineer, there are plenty of reasons why Alain Johannes is such a revered name in rock, grunge, punk, and pretty much any genre of guitar music that made it through the ‘90s. With his latest solo album Hum doing the rounds, we caught up with Johannes to glean some of his signature bright, energetic wisdom.  

When you’re making your own music, do you follow the same formulas you would as a producer with any other band, or do you need to approach it from a different perspective?
I approach every project in the way that I feel is most natural – my resonance and my empathy and my desire to connect to the project as a part of it, whether as an assistant, a guide or a team player, or a family member to the music – which means that every time I work on a new record, it’s a different set of things that happen. I don’t have one definitive way of doing it. 

First of all, I need to resonate with what the artist I’m producing wants to achieve, and figure out what my role is in helping them do that. Sometimes it’s intensive, and sometimes it’s very mild. It might just be that I need to make a happy environment for them to feel creative in, and make sure that creativity gets documented and recorded properly. Sometimes they want me to get in there and contribute to the writing and the arrangement and all of that stuff.

When it comes to my own stuff, I think I’ve prepared my entire life by loving and learning other instruments. I’ve spent years collecting equipment, and I’ve got my setup to a very efficient point – I can just go into the room and there’s five or six different microphones ready in different positions, and depending on what instrument I’m using, I’ll choose what microphone to use. And all the microphones and the instruments and everything – the percussion and my horns, my 60-plus stringed instruments and all the exotic instruments – they’re all basically living in this space, just ready to be grabbed. 

I love flowing with whatever the music dictates, or whatever my instincts are telling me to do. For example, on a couple of tunes I used a banjo, because I’m yet to purchase a hurdy-gurdy but I wanted that kind of medieval, pagan feeling. And I totally knew that if I tuned the banjo in roots and fifths and played it with a bow, with that midrange that it has, and get a couple strings droning in the same note, I would get that feeling. And I just love that kind of spontaneous, improvisational kind of approach – it happens really quickly and there’s very little thinking to it.

Do you it difficult to be objective when you’re in that position?
I don’t, because for some reason I’ve got this view towards my music that it’s something that already exists in the ether – I’m just receiving a transmission from the universe that I’m supposed to decode through my particular filters. I don’t really look at it like, “Oh, this is mine, I did this” – I mean obviously, y’know, it says ‘written and performed by Alain Johannes’ on the sticker, but it’s not mine to claim – the music is there, and I’m just here to help it come into existence. It feels natural to me that way, and it helps me be able to look at it afterwards and go, “Yeah, this is music!” It just happens to be mine, y’know? 

I don’t want to attach an ego to it – whether it’s good or not, or whatever – I’m really trying to just document the feeling I have and my state of being in a particular time.

The first takes are always some of my favourites. The closest I can get to the exact moment song appears is usually the best, because it has the most energy to me – it has the particular kind of that energy that I like, which I listen for in other music as well. And y’know, I know full well that if I start to obsess over a tone or a guitar solo, and then I might do ten takes of it before I realise that the first one was the one that felt the best for the song. Learning that throughout the years was crucial – especially when I was younger, because y’know, when you’re green to it all, you think that there has to be a process and it has to be arduous, and you have to torture yourself, and only through blood, sweat and tears can you get amazing results. But that couldn’t be less true. 

I’ll tell you what though, starting the record is always the hardest part. I can’t will that to happen – I can never convince myself to just sit down and go, “Alright, I’m going to start making music now,” because if I’m going to come up with a good idea, then it’s going to happen at whatever spontaneous moment it’s going to happen in, y’know? And to put a timeframe on making an album just doesn’t make sense. A good album might take four days to make, like Spark, or 14, like Fragments – or other records I’ve been a part of where it took ten months or whatever.

What is it about the way music was made in the ‘90s that makes it so beloved amongst people today?
My first recordings were in the ‘80s, straight out of high school, and so that time period was particularly exciting for me. But my approach was just what everybody else was doing – and everybody was doing it that way. You can spot an ‘80s-sounding song a mile away. And I think the way things changed in the ‘90s was a reaction to that – and MTV, and a lot of the things that happened in the cultural shift back then. And also, the energy in Seattle at the time – there was just this amazing pool of talent that happened to be there for some reason. I don’t know if it was the environment that fostered it – a little darker and colder, more melancholy, and just more interesting than what came from a lot of the happier pop or hair metal or whatever else was happening at the time. 

I think the way that a lot of those records were made – especially in some of the earlier studios that still had the analogue technology, before everyone went digital – they made them more timeless sounding. It’s like jeans, a t-shirt, a leather jacket and a pair of boots: there aren’t too many distinctive features about that outfit, but it’s always cool – that kind of stuff works almost any time, anywhere – you can wear that and just know you look stylish. And when you record music without too many effects and you’re just capturing the energy, it tends to have a more timeless kind of sound. A lot of those recordings in the ‘90s were very full-sounding and very powerful, but they didn’t have a lot of fat around the edges.

I mean sonically, y’know, you can’t really pigeonhole it – it’s more the feeling of the music that you look at and say, “Oh, that’s from the ‘90s.” There was just something in the air at that point in time; especially in Seattle. The movement and the name ‘grunge’ was ascribed to it after the fact, but it just happened to be one of those moments and places.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about making music?
I think this constant surge towards autonomy is so overdue. Music used to be so prohibitive, y’know? You could rehearse and do demos and stuff, but to actually go and make a master recording, you had to hire a studio and pay for engineers, producers, maybe session musicians… So pretty early on, Natasha [Shneider] and I started keeping some recording gear around – enough to get things going that we could make good recordings on our own. And I think the key was having our own studio when Eleven was born, thanks to Chris Cornell inviting the president of A&M over, him liking our music and giving us a record deal, and then letting us use the budget for the album to buy the gear that would become the studio in our house.

Brooklyn-based effects pedal company Death By Audio has teamed up with non-profit GetUsPPE to sell donated gear from acts including Wilco, the Flaming Lips, Queens of the Stone Age in an effort to raise money for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for healthcare and frontline workers battling COVID-19.

The pop-up shop Protection By Audio will be hosted on Reverb and features autographed gear, hand-drawn one-offs and pieces of musical history. Other acts involved include IDLES, Spoon, the Black Angels, Spacemen 3, Thee Oh Sees, A Place to Bury Strangers, Xiu Xiu, METZ, the Melvins, That Dog, the Voidz, Into It.Over It and This Will Destroy You. 

Death By Audio will also be donating rare and never-been-seen prototypes.

Among the many items up for sale include a DBA Reverberation Machine hand-drawn by Wilco’s Nels Cline, DBA and A Place to Bury Strangers’ Oliver Ackermann's red Fender Jaguar, a DBA Flaming Lips Space Ring pedal signed by Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd and an EQD Bit Commander, Dr. No Octofuzz and KHDK Scuzz Box, all owned and signed by Queens of the Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen.

There are also DBA prototype pedals including a Total Sonic Annihilation 2 and Space Bass Custom one-off.

All proceeds from the popup shop will go directly to GetUsPPE, a volunteer-driven organization started by emergency department physicians in March 2020 as a solution to the PPE crisis among healthcare workers

Protection By Audio started when Death By Audio partners Oliver Ackermann and Heather Bickford were quarantined in their Brooklyn apartment, having recently recovered from the virus. 

“After hearing the struggles and traumas experienced by those working on the frontlines, we knew we had to do something to help,” said Bickford.

"We brainstormed a bunch of ideas and then it dawned on us that we have a lot of friends in the music industry and that a lot of them would be down to help.”

To check out the Protection By Audio pop-up shop, head to Reverb.com.

These days, Josh Homme may be primarily known for leading Queens of the Stone Age, but back in the early ‘90s the electric guitar player was spearheading a new wave of stoner metal with desert-rockers Kyuss.

Since then, his relationship with his ex-band mates has been rocky – in 2012 Homme and former Kyuss bassist Scott Reeder filed a lawsuit against former Kyuss drummer Brandt Bjork and singer John Garcia over their involvement in the band Kyuss Lives!, alleging trademark infringement and consumer fraud.

At the time, Homme and Reeder said in a statement: “To think we went to a meeting in January solely to help them with their request to continue Kyuss Lives! With open arms, we made every attempt to help them continue Kyuss Lives! respectfully. Only to discover while they looked us in the eye, Kyuss Lives! management and band had filed federal documents in 2011 in an attempt to steal the name Kyuss.”

But in a new interview with Kyuss World Radio (via Blabbermouth), Homme considered the idea of a reunion.

"My philosophy has always been, never do a reunion, never do a sequel. It's not what it was; it's what it is,” he said.

“And that's kind of how I've felt. A legacy that involves having been at the epicenter of a scene that got created, it's so fragile; it's like an ice sculpture. And I don't wanna be a blow dryer on that thing.

“That being said, I was in full support of Kyuss Lives! and I would go to the shows and I told them as much, until what Brant and, unfortunately, what John tried to do. And that was terrible.”

But, he continued, “I have thought about this, especially in the last few years, to do something special, and even to make up for that mistake of Brant and, unfortunately, John, to make up for it. [I thought we should] play and give all the money away. Like, play for the fans - cover your costs and make it five bucks. Figure out a way to be, like, this is how the punctuation will end the sentence of this band.

“Because it was never about money - it never was about money. It never was about fame, and when it felt like that was the move they were making, I was so sad."

Queens of the Stone Age have gotten in the holiday spirit in their characteristic weird way, with a rendition of the holiday classic, “Silent Night.” The song, which features QOTSA leader Joshua Homme with Australian blues singer-songwriter and guitarist C.W. Stoneking, is available as a limited-edition Christmas single available on 7” vinyl. The B-side boasts a reading of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," with Homme, Distillers frontwoman Brody Dalle and “their three merry-making elves.”

Proceeds from the single will benefit the Sweet Stuff Foundation, the non-profit created by Homme in 2013 to provide assistance to career musicians, recording engineers and their families struggling with illness and disability, and to Support Act, an alliance with a similar mission founded in 1997 in Australia by AMCOS, APRA, ARIA and PPCA.

“Silent Night” / “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” was recorded in East Fremantle, during Queens of the Stone Age’s 2017 tour of Australia. 

The limited-edition vinyl will be released December 14 and is available exclusively at QOTSA.com.

Queens of the Stone Age have shared a live performance of their 2017 song, “The Way You Used to Do,” in radically reworked form.

At a one-off acoustic set at the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Australia—a show that benefitted the Royal Hobart Hospital Pediatrics Ward—the band transformed the jaunty, upbeat single from their 2017 album, Villains, in a darker, more stripped-down affair.

The show at MONA reportedly raised $10,000, which was matched by QOTSA frontman Joshua Homme’s own Sweet Stuff Foundation, for a total of $20,000. The following day the band visited the Pediatrics Ward at the Royal Hobart Hospital, where they presented staff with a check for the donations.

Check out the performance above.

Queens of the Stone Age have released the creepy, disconcerting animated music video for their song, "Head Like a Haunted House." You can check it out above.

The video—which was directed by Liam Lynch—shows frontman Josh Homme (or his head really, crudely attached to an animated body) in a soundproofed cell, in a bed surrounded by skeletons, at a creepy seance and trapped in any number of other strange scenarios.

Queens of the Stone Age are coming off an eventful 2017, to put it rather lightly. In August, they released Villains, a swaggering, hook-laden album that ranked as one of their best. What should have been a year of triumph however, ended in controversy after Homme kicked a female photographer in the face during a performance at KROQ's Almost Christmas show in December.

Regardless, the band is set to embark on another North American tour, after wrapping up a few shows in Latin America, in addition to their first North American trek in support of Villains.

Queens of the Stone Age have announced a series of tour dates for early 2018, that will take the hard-rock quintet to the western United States and Canada.

The dates—which are in support of the band's terrific new album, Villains—begin in late January, and will keep the band on the road through early February, with a couple of additional dates in mid February.

Known for their intense performances, the band will bring their trademark mix of punk attitude and artistic fearlessness to the stage. Speaking to Guitar World in August, Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme said "For me, playing music is an escapism worth its weight in gold, and trying to do it in an artful manner is totally everything, man."

"My grandpa used to always say, if you can’t outsmart them, out-dumb them, and I feel like my calling is to out-stupid everybody."

You can see all of the band's 2018 tour dates below, and be sure to read our August cover story with Homme if you haven't!

Queens of the Stone Age 2018 Tour Dates

• Jan. 24 - Vancouver, British Columbia @ Pacific Coliseum
• Jan. 25 - Seattle, Wash. @ KeyArena at Seattle Center
• Jan. 26 - Portland, Ore. @ Rose Quarter – Veterans Memorial Coliseum
• Jan. 27 - Eugene, Ore. @ Hult Center For the Performing Arts – Silva Concert Hall
• Jan. 28 - Fresno, Calif. @ Selland Arena at Fresno Convention Center
• Jan. 30 - Sacramento, Calif. @ Sacramento Memorial Auditorium
• Feb. 1 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium *
• Feb. 16 - Las Vegas, Nev. @ The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas – The Chelsea
• Feb. 17 - Los Angeles, Calif. @The Forum

* Ty Segall supports

This past weekend, the Foo Fighters—who we profiled in the December issue of Guitar World—headlined the Cal Jam '17 festival, a giant gathering in San Bernardino, California, that the band curated.

The festival—which also featured Queens of the Stone Age, Cage the Elephant, the Kills, Liam Gallagher, Babes in Toyland and Bob Mould to name a few—was the sight of some remarkable moments, not the least of which was this particular jam, in which the Foo Fighters were joined by Aermosmith guitarist Joe Perry and Liam Gallagher for a rendition of the Beatles' "Come Together."

The band also performed the 1977 Aerosmith hit, "Draw the Line," with Perry, possibly as a means of connecting Cal Jam '17 to its predecessors, the gargantuan California Jam festivals of 1974 and 1978 (the latter of which Aerosmith headlined.)

Though the video covers the full performance of "Come Together"—we also included the "Draw the Line" performance for your convenience—it does include the distraction of Liam Gallagher's decision to crowd surf around the four-minute mark.

You can watch both clips below.

There are few bands in rock music whose individual members have résumés as long and as impressive as those in Queens of the Stone Age.

Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen has graced albums by A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, Eagles of Death Metal and Gone Is Gone, a new alt-metal supergroup featuring Mastodon’s Troy Sanders. Guitarist/keyboardist Dean Fertita has moonlighted with the Raconteurs, the Dead Weather and, most recently, Iggy Pop with QOTSA frontman Josh Homme.

While few bands would tolerate such infidelities, these Queens seem to thrive on it.

“I’ve been in this band for almost a decade and it just feels like home,” says Fertita. “It’s been a luxury to be in such a great group and still have the freedom to play with so many different people over the years. The idea is we’ll all grow as musicians and bring it back to the band.”

Van Leeuwen concurs. “It’s a very healthy creative environment. When we circle back to making a Queens record, we’re all recharged and psyched to play together again.”

Playing in a band with three guitarists no doubt demands an ability to work well with others, but it’s almost shocking to hear the enthusiasm the trio has for adding their piece of the puzzle.

Was there a guitar game plan going into this album?
DEAN FERTITA Conceptually, we knew we wanted this record to be very upfront. That immediately suggested looking for smaller, layered sounds that wouldn’t take up a ton of space. It was fun. We had to get creative on how we were going to do that, and not just go to some default settings that we’ve used over the years.

There are a lot of guitar cooks in the kitchen in the Queens of the Stone Age. How do the arrangements get sorted out?
FERTITA Like any other band, we basically get into a room and react to each other. Having three guitar players can be challenging. There’s no room for redundancy, and we won’t play something if it doesn’t need it. We arranged these songs with the intention of tracking them as live as possible, and keeping overdubs to a minimum. We figured if we can’t play a part in the live scenario, it probably doesn’t need to be there. That saved us from getting carried away in the studio.

TROY VAN LEEUWEN Another rule of thumb was, the cleaner the tone, the better. When Jimmy Page overdubs multiple guitars, like on “In the Light” by Led Zeppelin, you’ll notice each guitar is very clean. If there’s fuzz, like on “The Way You Used to Do,” you need to work a little harder to find just the right frequencies, but that can also be fun. It’s very subtle, but I’m actually playing a 12-string on that song, which helped make the blend.

FERTITA I really wasn’t sure how “The Way You Used to Do” was going to shake out for me personally. It felt like a two-part guitar song, and it didn’t really feel like it needed keys. I thought I was going to sit that one out. But then as we got into it a little bit more, we realized, Oh, there are a couple moments here where three guitars could be really effective. That main riff. , for instance. All three guys are playing different voicings in that, to make up the sum-total of how that riff. sounds. Our tones are all just different enough that they find their own space.

Did you guys have a basic guitar setup for the album?
VAN LEEUWEN I used a Jazzmaster on many of the tracks. Not a lot of rock guitarists use it, but the Jazzmaster has a huge range. It can go from shrill and wiry to super warm with a flick of a switch, and the floating tremolo comes in handy for a lot of what I do. It’s also got a longer scale, so it takes lower tunings well for us. I tune it to C for all the older stuff, because we lived in C tuning for a long time.

Troy Van Leeuwen (left) and Dean Fertita at the Rock in Rio music festival in Brazil on September 24, 2015

Josh, Dean and I also used a variety of custom Echopark guitars. We have this amazing relationship with the owner, Gabe Currie, who worked with Leo Fender when Leo was at G&L. Gabe is the real deal American handmade guitar maker. So much so, he says that each guitar he makes, even though he sells it, is still partly his. He’ll make something and just show up at the studio and go, “I thought about you and this is what I came up with.” And he’s usually right on.

How about pedals?
VAN LEEUWEN One pedal that keeps coming back into our fold is the Eventide H9. It’s outstanding for lush and clean reverbs. The last couple albums we used tons of spring reverbs and dirty effects, but we wanted to keep that to a minimum on Villains. I also used the Way Huge Saffron Squeeze Compressor when I wanted sustain without the dirt. For fuzz, I collaborated with a company called Dr. No on something called the TVL Octavia. It’s got a great voice, and direct, it is pretty un-fuck-with-able.

FERTITA I used this Son of Kong EQ/Gain pedal by Spontaneous Audio for my direct out, and for amps I used small Gibsons and things like that. I don’t think I went larger than a 2x12 at any point. I tried a few bigger amps, but it just didn’t seem to fit.

Do you see yourself as having a specific guitar role in the band?
VAN LEEUWEN A lot of what we do stems from Josh and what he brings in. He created the band and gives it his signature. The way I see it, I’ll either support his part harmonically or juxtapose with the rhythm. But when it comes to live performance, there’s a bit more wiggle room. If there’s any chance to improvise, Dean and I are all over it.

FERTITA I always just think, if I was writing the song, what would I think would be an important element to add to it. I try to approach my parts from a songwriting point of view.

Do you have a personal favorite moment on the album?
VAN LEEUWEN I think the one that sticks out in my head is the whole intro to “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now.” The way the record starts. That whole exchange was all done live, and none of us really appreciated how great it was sounding while we were tracking it. It wasn’t until playback that we had our “a-ha” moment.

We’re always thinking about the mix when it comes to guitars, because it’s the most complicated part of what we do.

When it was announced that Villains, the new album by Queens of the Stone Age, was going to be produced by pop renaissance man Mark Ronson (Adele, Bruno Mars), logic dictated that he would chisel away at the band’s quirky edges.

Queens guitarist and chief conceptualist, Josh Homme, dismisses the notion with a wave of his hand. “There’s this perception that there’s no musical overlap between us and Mark, but, in reality, there’s a stunning amount. We wanted this album to be tight like an early ZZ Top record, and he is so beat-centric, we knew he would help us keep the rhythm section tight and dense.”

Homme’s instincts proved to be correct. Far from being a soulless slice of modern pop product, Villains is infused with an almost old fashioned sense of rock and roll exuberance and devilish mischief.

The fierce robot boogie of the album’s inescapable first single, “The Way You Used to Do,” captures the overall spirit of the album, which manages to reference oldies but goodies like Chuck Berry and Little Richard while still sounding fresh, funky and futuristic.

“I was watching this wild footage of Jerry Lee Lewis from one of his first performances on television during the early Fifties, and he was really putting on a show,” says Homme. “He was going into fits and the shakes while he was singing and playing the piano, and basically encouraging the audience to do the same. The kids were totally losing it. Early rockers like Jerry, Elvis and Little Richard were so radical for their time, I could just imagine parents saying, ‘These guys are villains—this has to stop!’

“That is the punk rock infiltration that I’ve always desired. I have no interest in fitting in or playing nice. My interest is in when you’re revolting against your parents—or if you’re just plain revolting and a sick individual—you come to me.”

Rock and roll subversion is rarely accomplished alone, and Homme has amassed a pretty impressive team of henchmen to help him on his mission. It’s not an overstatement to say Queens of the Stone Age features three of the most creative guitarists in rock music.

In addition to the innovative frontman, the current lineup includes Troy Van Leeuwen, a respected session musician who also moonlights with Tool’s Maynard Keenan in A Perfect Circle, and Dean Fertita who plays with Jack White in the Dead Weather (see sidebar). So, how do the three make room for all the side projects and still stay focused on the mothership?

“I think the way you live your life has such a massive impact on how long you do your art,” says Homme. “I’ve really staked everything on the fact that music is my religion and my philosophy. It’s how I explain myself when it’s difficult, it’s how I teach my kids, and how I live. I want the guys that are in Queens to unequivocally understand we’re here because we want to be, not because we need to be. So, everyone is encouraged to go do other things, and pick up as much knowledge as they can, so they can bring it home so we can pick through it and get inspired.”

As you will see, there is plenty in Villains to get inspired about. The trio brings a whole new bag of guitar licks and sonic strategies to the band’s already super distinctive sound. In the past, Homme has been reluctant to talk specifics about his sound. But clearly a new spirit of openness pervades his music, and during our conversation, he decided to share a few of his most interesting and provocative ideas.

I really enjoyed the almost uplifting rock and roll attitude on Villains. It’s “let’s have some fun and break some rules,” as opposed to “fuck you, I’m gonna go and shoot some smack.”
JOSH HOMME I like the idea of putting an accelerant on somebody who is thinking, This is who I really wish I was, and this is what I really want to do. Saying “fuck you” is lame and boring. That’s uniting over what you don’t like. It’s too easy, and I have no interest in that.

For me, playing music is an escapism worth its weight in gold, and trying to do it in an artful manner is totally everything, man. My grandpa used to always say, if you can’t outsmart them, out-dumb them, and I feel like my calling is to out-stupid everybody.

That’s a good calling! On the cover of the album I noticed the devil is sitting next to you. He’s covering your eyes, but you’re seeing right through him.
Yeah, man. Everyone feels like they’ve got the devil on their back, or everyone is worried about the devil. But what if that’s your good buddy?

One of the roles of the devil is to go against the grain, which is essential to good rock and roll.
Totally. I think I’ve always felt like if everyone is doing it, how good could it be? There’s only a few instances of things that we all agree on, like Coca-Cola, and maybe like, two other things. On a very fundamental level, whatever bothers a lot of people is a really great place to start, especially if you do it with a nod and a wink. I think for me, that devil is about cutting loose. Life is too short to let fear drive. Now is all you’re ever going to get.

Are you a realist or an optimist?
Both. The realist has a bit of disdain for humanity. The optimistic side, however, believes in truth, to strive for something, to have a faith, and my faith is in rock and roll. My religion is in rock and roll. That’s how I question rules, and that’s how I say: you should think for yourself. That’s how I say: if you don’t make your own plans, you’re part of somebody else’s, and I simply refuse to do that. Defiance looks beautiful no matter who wears it.

Speaking of defiance, you recently recorded an album with Iggy Pop, one of the ultimate rock rebels. What was that like?
Doing Iggy’s record, Post Pop Depression, was the single coolest thing I’ve ever been allowed to be part of. It was a total recharge. It left me feeling like, “Let’s go get ’em, boys!” I love Iggy so much because I really try my best to live in the third truth—you know, yours, mine and what actually happened.

I think Iggy has been living in the third truth his entire life. He wrote this thing for me about what happened during the recording of his solo albums with David Bowie, The Idiot and Lust for Life, and it was so beautifully written because it was completely honest. You just read it and you go, “He never tries to take credit for anything that isn’t his. Nor is he trying to doll up what he did do.” It was just very matter of fact.

Let’s talk some guitar. You regularly express your admiration for loose punk rock bands like Black Flag, the Cramps or the Stooges, but your signature sound is often this super tight, sort of buttoned-down thing. Is there a dichotomy there?
No, I don’t think so, because the lesson of punk rock is to do your own thing. If I’m influenced by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn, it’s not to be Greg Ginn. It’s to find who I am in this grand experiment of life. I’ve always had this un-supply, undemand theory. If I see a repetition of something out there, I just presuppose we don’t need more of that, so I think I’ve always tried to shoot the gap. I’ve always tried to play what I don’t hear.

When did you decide that you were going to try to make a unique statement on the guitar?
I must have been around 13. When I started Sons of Kyuss, my band before Kyuss, we wore our influences on our sleeves and we kind of sounded like other bands, as you do when you’re young. There was a little blowback from that. I think the sting of being embarrassed about imitating somebody at that early age was so powerful, I remember saying, “Never again will somebody say that we sound like somebody else.”

That’s interesting. Usually, when you’re that young, people ask you to cover other bands.
Well, I was fortunate that my little community demanded something unique. It had nothing to do with me. It already existed when I showed up. We lived in Palm Desert, California, and played these outdoor shows powered by a generator that was owned by a guy named Mario Lalli. It was a real DIY environment. And Mario, who we called “Boomer,” in a nice way would just encourage all the bands to find their own voice.

Just like any recipe, that little sprinkle really germinated this attitude of: you must sound like yourself or who do you sound like? Who are you? There were no clubs to play and, in a way, it was incredibly fortunate, because there was no pressure to play Top 40 music and no money to be made.

Honestly, there wasn’t even a way to get out. There were about a thousand windmills at the entrance to the valley I lived in, and it always seemed like we were trapped behind an iron curtain. No way in, no way out—just these spinning blades. So, I never thought I was going to get out. The fact that I’m still doing this is kind of a mystery, but I do attribute the reason I’m still here is that drive to try to find yourself over and over and over.

I never wanted anyone to ever say I sounded like someone else ever again, and that was that. It was as if it was the simplest thing in the world. I struggled to find my voice, but I believed I would accomplish that goal. I never questioned it, and I’m thankful. However, I would not have gotten there on my own without the encouragement of the locals.

Josh Homme with his custom-made nine-string Echopark Esperanto Z

Before you were in Queens of the Stone Age, you were in Kyuss, who were very influential in the early Nineties. Can you tell me about some of your early guitar experiments in Kyuss?
When Kyuss first formed, there were very few people experimenting with detuning. Back in 1988 or 1989, there was nobody tuning down to B and C like I was—I challenge you to find someone else. I thought it was a good first step toward creating a unique sound. I saw an absence—an un-supply un-demand. Part of it was that I didn’t have a tuner, so I started asking myself, how low can you go?

There are times when I’m drunk, I wonder how much of this detuning business I’m responsible for. I think it’s more than I realize, but a lot of it is not that great, so maybe it’s not the kind of credit I should be looking for. [laughs]

I also used the neck pickup exclusively in Kyuss. I never used the treble pickup, because I thought in the singularity of doing the same thing over and over I would find myself. What’s funny is, I’m using my Kyuss heads on tour with Queens right now, just to change up my shit. It’s funny to go full circle after so many years. The same Ampeg heads that I used when I was 15 still work and sound great! I mean, I guess there’s no reason they shouldn’t.

Playing through Ampeg heads was another interesting choice.
The first amp I ever bought was an Ampeg VT40. They don’t make ’em like that anymore. All that Ampeg stuff is very special. But when it was time not to be in Kyuss, I pretty much left that sound behind.

So we’ve established that you’re a pretty conceptual guy when it comes to your gear. When you started recording Villains, was there something new that you wanted to do or accomplish with your sound?
For years I kept most of my recording techniques a secret, and for some reason, I feel like all of that doesn’t matter now. I didn’t want to take somebody’s journey away by telling them what I did. But everyone has their own secrets in their world, and it’s also cool to share some of them. I’m just going to kind of unload what I did on this record.

This is our seventh record, and I decided it was time to burn some of the ideas that became so closely associated with our sound. On past albums, I really explored using dirty reverbs and mid-range sounds almost to a point of obsession. Looking for ways to get width, and using the darker side of the guitar’s mid-range was not an area people were paying much attention to, so it really appealed to me. I also secretly used solid-state amps in the studio, because I liked the sound of that fast electricity. To my ears, solid state amps just sound like they are charged with electricity.

On this album, I changed my entire approach and decided to experiment extensively with recording many of our guitar parts directly into the board. I wanted the sound of the guitars to be completely vacuous, so that you could hear exactly where the note stopped. Not just where it started, but where it stopped.

I think one of the cues I took was from listening to the old Stooges albums. You can turn them up to 10 on your stereo, and they’ll still sound great because the guitars are not so big that they eat up all the real estate in your stereo and your speakers. I wanted to make something that you could crank the piss out of and it would still sound fantastic.

Now, I’d be willing to bet in that first song, “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now,” that you turned it up in the beginning when all those ambient guitar sounds come in. I kept them quiet on purpose. It’s a dirty trick, because I wanted to lure the listener to turn up their stereo, so when the rhythm guitars finally kick in, it’s so tight and dense it will knock you back, but still sound amazing.

It’s interesting that more players don’t explore the joys of DI (direct input) recording. Some of the greatest—and largest—recorded guitar sounds of all-time were DI. Neil Young’s guitar on “Cinnamon Girl” and Jimmy Page’s guitars on Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” are great examples.
Yes. It really gets interesting, especially when you pair that DI tonality with a room amp. The combination is like having the tip of a spear almost poking you in the eye, while the back end is on the other side of the room.

I’ll add that I love a good room sound as opposed to reverb, because reverb goes and goes and goes until it dissipates, but room sound is like saying: the box we play in is this size. It’s finite. When I listen back to our tracks, I always have this picture of what the room size was. You blow smoke in the air and you see the clear walls of this box that things were put in. Does that make sense?

Yeah, most of my favorite albums, like the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. and Led Zeppelin IV, were recorded in interesting spaces. I think part of the reason I like them is because the sound describes the complexity of the rooms they were recorded in.
I know that the most important thing to me over the last 10 years has been depth of field. I mean, I certainly use left and right, of course, and this record is extremely hard-panned much of the time. But depth of field is way more important, because I like that you can hear something that clearly sounds like it’s in the back of the room. And I love that occurring at the same time as that DI needle hovers close to your eardrum.

Your playing has to be pretty tight to withstand the microscope of DI recording.
The most difficult song that we’ve ever had to play is our single, “The Way You Used to Do.” It’s a fuckin’ nightmare. I don’t know what it is. To sing and play with that sort of tightness is really demanding.

Why put yourself through it?
I wish I had more choice in what music we played. I do feel like I’m being dragged behind a boat a lot of times, because you play what comes out of your mind. I love that Johnny Cash quote, “I’m not the creator of the music, I’m a deliverer.”

Does your distortion come from the amp, or are you a pedal guy?
I feel like driving the pre-and driving the head is the way to go. I just presuppose that the people that made these heads know what they’re doing and gave a shit. If anything, I might add one of my all-time favorite pedals, the Maestro Parametric Filter, because they add or subtract up to 20db with a wide or tight cue of a wide spectrum of frequencies, all in one go.

There’s an infinite universe in that.
Yeah, that’s why I don’t mind talking about it, because even if you like what we do, and decide to buy one, you still need to find who you are within that universe. The sweep is so wide and variable that it doesn’t really help to know I use it. You still need to discover what you like when you use it. I think it’s the greatest pedal ever.

I understand you’re a fan of big band music, and it shows. Between the fuzz tones and the harmonies, many of the guitar parts on Villains sound like they could be arranged for horns.
I’ve been experimenting with arranging guitar parts to emulate the sound of horns since our first album, Rated R. As I mentioned earlier, I’m really interested in the edge of the sound, and how it stops, and horns do that well. I wanted to see if I could create the same effect with guitars, so I kept pursuing that idea in the Eagles of Death Metal. I wanted the guitars to simulate the baritone trombone and saxophone parts heard in sleazy burlesque clubs. I always kind of thought of Eagles of Death Metal in those terms.

It’s an idea that is also a constant on Villains. How do I make a DI and a little bit of room seem like horns? And how do I do it over and over? And how am I able to layer it? Because when you have three guitars it’s difficult. Everyone needs to be able to be heard, and I think the important thing in Queens of the Stone Age is that it’s about the details. So how do I have three guitars of varying mid-range frequencies all be heard properly?

Combining DI parts, using some depth of field and thinking of the guitars like they were horns helped. Those were the three main questions. Who’s playing saxophone-style guitar? Who’s going DI, and who’s set back but heard clearly? That was our approach to get all three guitars to play nice together. Additionally, we ended up using a lot of keyboards to add to the effect that we were creating a horn section. And, of course it all had to live in that weird 400 to 1k world Queens lives in.

You mentioned that one of your goals for Villians is to make it a dance album. Why was that important to you?
Rock and roll should dance. It always did before, so I don’t see what the fucking problem is. You know, there’s something beautiful about headbanging because it’s like telling everyone else around you, “I don’t care what you think. I like this.”

It’s the same thing with dancing, and that’s why I love it so much. Dancing is like saying, “I don’t care what you think, I’m doing this.” In other forms of music, dance is so acceptable, it’s at the forefront of what it is. I always think of that as being at the forefront of rock and roll, and I’m always surprised when people’s inhibitions and fears, which translates into them thinking they’re cooler than something, gets in the way of something joyous and vulnerable and emotional.

Queens of the Stone Age, who have a new album—Villains—coming out in a few weeks, released some new music today. Be sure to check out "The Evil Has Landed," their new single (also available on iTunes), via the charmingly semi-creepy lyric video below.

The undeniably catchy tune, which benefits from a mid-period Led Zeppelin vibe before morphing into a straight-ahead blues-rocker, was produced by Mark Ronson.

It also happens to be packed with guitars; oddly enough, the band recently told NME that guitars are "going extinct."

“It’s like guitars are going extinct in a lot of ways," said drummer Jon Theodore. "Now it’s punk to learn upright bass or classical guitar….It’s a new world right now, and sometimes I feel like a dinosaur but most of the time I’m just grateful that we got started before this transition started—I mean we’re still firmly rooted in the world of guitar.”

Speaking of guitars, look for more QOTSA coverage in the November issue of Guitar World.

Villains will be released August 25.

Hundreds of epic shows, memory lapses, unexplained injuries, one yearlong detour with Iggy Pop and multiple Grammy nominations later, Queens Of The Stone Age reemerge from the desert newly scarred and somehow strangely prettier with lucky seventh album, Villains, out August 25 on Matador Records.

Villains is now available for preorder on deluxe vinyl, standard vinyl, CD and digital. All formats include an instant download of first single “The Way You Used To Do”—which you can listen to below.

Produced by Mark Ronson and co-produced by Mark Rankin and mixed by Alan Moulder, Villains is the first full album offering from Queens Of The Stone Age since 2013’s …Like Clockwork gave the band its first #1 album in the US. Like the stunning artwork of returning illustrator Boneface, the sonic signatures of the lineup that took …Like Clockwork around the world and back—founder/guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Joshua Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen (guitar, keys), Michael Shuman (bass), Dean Fertita (keys, guitar), Jon Theodore (drums)—are as unmistakable as ever, though coexisting with sufficient new twists to induce recurring double takes.

As Homme himself puts it, “The most important aspect of making this record was redefining our sound, asking and answering the question 'what do we sound like now?' If you can’t make a great first record, you should just stop—but if you can make a great record but you keep making records and your sound doesn’t evolve, you become a parody of that original sound."

Of his role working within such a closed and confident ecosystem as Queens Of The Stone Age, Ronson says, "Queens are and have always been my favorite rock ’n’ roll band ever since I walked into Tower on Sunset and bought Rated R in the summer of 2000, so it was incredibly surreal to be welcomed into their secret, pirate clan—or the ‘jacuzzi’ as Josh likes to call it.”

He continues, “I also knew that my super fandom alone would not keep me in the jacuzzi. There were moments during the making of the album in which I was aware I was watching my musical heroes craft something that was sure to become one of my favorite moments on any Queens album. And to have some part in that felt like being in a dream—a very heavy, dark, wonderful dream.”

Longtime Queens cohort co-producer Mark Rankin added, "After the baptism of fire that was …Like Clockwork, I was excited to get into the studio again with the challenge of pushing the sound for this record, especially with the the addition of Ronson into the creative mix. We wanted to evolve the production to be processed in a modern way yet be totally organic and still performed fully live, like lifting a veil and what you thought was electronic is actually live and things are not as they first appear… What we’ve made is forward looking yet unmistakably Queens."

Queens Of The Stone Age have also confirmed a slew of North American dates filling in the space between and beyond their previously announced appearances at Outside Lands and Riot Fest. The new shows, which include Queens’ first ever Madison Square Garden headline, are detailed below.

For tour dates and tickets, head over to http://smarturl.it/QOTSALive.

Villains Track List:

• 1. Feet Don’t Fail Me
• 2. The Way You Used To Do
• 3. Domesticated Animals
• 4. Fortress
• 5. Head Like A Haunted House
• 6. Un-Reborn Again
• 7. Hideaway
• 8. The Evil Has Landed
• 9. Villains Of Circumstance

North American Tour with special guests Royal Blood (September 6 - October 24 headline dates):

June 22 — Rapids Theater — Niagara Falls, NY
June 24 — Amnesia Rockfest 2017 — Montebello, QC
August 10 – Majestic Ventura Theater – Ventura, CA
August 12 – Outside Lands – San Francisco, CA
September 6 – Capitol Theatre – Port Chester, NY
September 7 – Festival Pier – Philadelphia, PA
September 9 – Budweiser Stage – Toronto, ON
September 10 – 20 Monroe Live – Grand Rapids, MI
September 12 – Express Live! Outdoor Pavilion – Columbus, OH
September 13 – Stage AE (Outdoors) – Pittsburgh, PA
September 15 – Agora Theater – Cleveland, OH
September 16 – Riot Fest – Chicago, IL
October 9 – The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
October 10 – Red Rocks – Morrison, CO
October 12 – Peabody – St. Louis, MO
October 13 – Crossroads KC – Kansas City, MO
October 14 – Roy Wilkins Auditorium – Saint Paul, MN
October 15 – Eagles Ballroom – Milwaukee, WI
October 17 – Fox Theatre – Detroit, MI
October 18 – Old National Centre – Murat Theatre – Indianapolis, IN
October 20 – TBC – Washington, DC
October 21 – Agganis Arena - Boston, MA
October 22 – State Theatre – Portland, ME
October 24 – Madison Square Garden – New York, NY

When Labor Day came and went earlier this month, it reminded us of the American labor movement and the contributions American workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of the good ol' U.S. of A.

However, since we're Guitar World people, we couldn't help but apply those sentiments to music and the American people who made and make it—bands!

This, in turn, led to thoughts and theories about the greatest American band of all time, which led us to our latest readers' poll—the Best American Rock Band Ever! Yes, the gangs from Guitar World and Sweetwater want to get GW readers—you people!—involved as we attempt to crown the Best American Rock Band Ever!

Although we had thousands of bands to choose from, we decided to narrow things down to 32, which is perfect for a month's worth of intense—and fun (it's supposed to be fun, people!) matchups. All the bands were carefully selected by Guitar World's editorial staff.

Note that this poll includes current bands and bands that disappeared into the woodwork years ago. Also, if you're wondering why the Jimi Hendrix Experience aren't on this list, they weren't an American band. Hendrix was American, but he's not a band. Band of Gypsys were American, but they simply didn't make the cut based on the music released under the "Band of Gypsys" moniker. It's one of many tough sacrifices we had to make along the way. Speaking of which, be sure to read "How the Bracket Was Compiled" at the bottom of this story.

Anyway, here are our 32 American bands, which are presented in alphabetical order. You also can check out the entire 32-band bracket below.

Aerosmith, Alice In Chains, the Allman Brothers Band, the Beach Boys, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Doors, Eagles, Foo Fighters, Grateful Dead, Green Day, Guns N' Roses, Heart, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Ramones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Steely Dan, Steve Miller Band, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Styx, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Van Halen, the White Stripes and ZZ Top.

Enjoy our Best American Rock Band Ever Poll, which is sponsored by Sweetwater!

Today's Matchup

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Fronted by one of the greatest songwriters the U.S. has ever produced, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers have been crafting a uniquely American brand of rock ‘n’ for almost 40 years. They’ve channeled Bob Dylan, country, blues, soul and the Southern rock of their native Florida into a swampy brand all their own. “American Girl,” “Refugee” and “Learning to Fly” are all deservedly radio mainstays to this day. Petty’s songwriting and Mike Campbell’s sterling leads simply never get old.

• Queens of the Stone Age

Emerging from the barren deserts of South-central California, Queens of the Stone Age doused their stoner metal with a dash of wild psychedelia. Imbued with lead singer/sole constant member Josh Homme’s dark sense of humor, the band’s music can be bludgeoning and hilarious, sometimes in the same breath. But that sense of humor, and the band’s crushing attack, belies Homme’s extraordinary gift for pop hooks. For over a decade and a half now, Queens of the Stone Age have been producing blistering hard rock that will both make you chuckle and get stuck in your head.

Vote Now!

The polls are closed! Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have (rather easily) advanced to the next round. Check out today's matchup at GuitarWorld.com.

Behold the Latest Bracket!

Danny

How the Bracket Was Compiled

Here's how the bracket was—very unscientifically—compiled.

We drew the artists' names out of a hat (It was, in fact, a smelly Quebec Nordiques baseball cap) to help us create our bracket, which is available for your viewing pleasure below. Obviously, none of these of bands are ranked or come from a previously compiled list, so we chose purely random matchups to have as little impact as possible on the final outcome. We're actually pretty pleased with the way the bracket turned out.

Remember that, as with any poll, genre might occasionally clash against genre, so you'll just need to decide which artist has (or has had) the most to offer within his/their genre, perhaps which one has or had more natural talent or technical skill, which one had the biggest influence on other live acts, etc.

As always, you can vote only once per matchup (once per device, that is), and we'll be posting match-ups pretty much every day of the month, sometimes more than once per day, just to give you an early warning.

When Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen found himself in need of a double-neck Jazzmaster, he turned to — who else? — Fender Custom Shop Master Builder Paul Waller.

Guitars with two necks aren't as rare as you'd think, but the fact that Van Leeuwen’s 12- and six-string model was made with the body style of the offset Jazzmaster pointed this mission into uncharted waters.

You can see the entire process unfold in the new video below. Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook!

For more about the Fender Custom Shop, visit fender.com. For more on this story, head HERE.

Queens of the Stone Age made their Austin City Limits debut last week.

It was an epic, hour-long performance, all of which you can watch below.

Also, be sure to check out the bottom video, which is an online-exclusive performance of "Like Clockwork."

For more about Austin City Limits, including the show's schedule (and a behind-the-scenes feature pertaining to QOTSA's appearance), visit acltv.com.

Austin City Limits Web Exclusive: Queens of the Stone Age "Like Clockwork" from Austin City Limits on Vimeo.

In case you missed Queens of the Stone Age at last weekend's Lollapalooza at Chicago's Grant Park, you're in luck.

You can watch their entire set below. Enjoy!

Queens of the Stone Age have released another new music video for a track off their upcoming album, ... Like Clockwork.

This time, it's for a song called "My God Is the Sun," which starts off like a kick-ass modern surf-rock song (in case any surf bands out there are looking for new ideas).

The video, which you can watch below, continues the storyline from the band's previously released videos for "I Appear Missing," "Kalopsia," "Keep Your Eyes Peeled" and "If I Had a Tail."

If all the recent QOTSA videos and song premieres aren't quite enough for you, head over to the band's new website, Likeclockwork.tv, which offers fans creepy phone calls as part of the promotion for the new album.

Stay tuned for more new-album previews from Queens of the Stone Age. Apparently, they can — and do — strike at any moment!

Queens of the Stone Age have released another new music video for a track off their upcoming album, ... Like Clockwork.

This time, it's for a song called "If I Had a Tail," a live version of which the band began streaming for free last week.

The new animated video, which you can watch below, follows the storyline that began in the (also animated) video for "I Appear Missing," which the band released on May 6 (and which you can watch here).

If all these new QOTSA videos and song premieres aren't quite enough for you, head over to the band's new website, Likeclockwork.tv, which offers fans creepy phone calls as part of the promotion for the new album.

Stay tuned for more new-album previews from Queens of the Stone Age. Apparently, they can strike at any moment!

Queens of the Stone Age have posted another song from their new album, ... Like Clockwork, and you can check out the track — "Keep Your Eyes Peeled" — below.

Note that this isn't the official studio version of the song. It's a live version recorded last week when Josh Homme & Co. visited Belgian radio station Studio Brussel in Belgium. We shared two more songs from that live set — "I Sat By the Ocean" and "If I Had a Tail" — last week, and you can hear them here.

...Like Clockwork is slated for a June 4 release in North American, courtesy of Matador Records.

Be sure to head to the band's new website, Likeclockwork.tv, which offers fans creepy phone calls as part of the promotion for the new album.

On May 6, Queens of the Stone posted a new animated music video for "I Appear Missing," a track off their upcoming album, ...Like Clockwork. The album will be released June 4 via Matador Records.

Although the video is three minutes long, the album version of "I Appear Missing" should be a full six minutes, Billboard reports. And if the drumming sounds somewhat familiar, that's because Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl is behind the kit.

If the new video isn't eerie enough for you, head over to the band's new website, Likeclockwork.tv, which offers fans creepy phone calls as part of the promotion for the new album.

Since December, Queens Of The Stone Age have been sending cryptic letters — actual snail mail — to UK-based music magazines.

The first one was published in Mojo, with subsequent letters appearing last month in NME and Uncut.

The band have now sent a fourth letter, this time to Kerrang!, that — arguably — provides clues about their upcoming 2013 album.

Here's the full text of the latest missive:

"DEAR KERRANG,

...SOME THINGS YOU CAN'T FIX SO...

ON THIS RECORD WE CAME TO A REALIZATION: THE BESTTRICK OF ALL, IS NO TRICK AT ALL

THE SONGS ARE A REAL TIME DOCUMENT OF THE MANIC UPS AND DOWNS OF THE LAST YEAR. IT CAN'T ALWAYS RUN LIKE CLOCKWORK. SO RATHER THAN CONTROL THE DIRECTION OF THE RECORDINGS, WE DECIDED TO RIDE SHOTGUN ON OUR EMOTIONAL BANDWAGON. WE EMBRACED OUR EVIL, HELD THE HORRIBLE, LICKED THE LUNACY AND BLEW THE BEAUTIFUL. AS A RESULT, WE'RE ON CLOUD 9.

I CAN'T WRITE ANYMORE CAUSE MY PHONE'S DYING,

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE"

The "cloud 9" reference is one of several number references to appear in the four letters; the letters mentioned are usually six or nine, which has led some to think the album will be released June 9. Or September 6 ...

Musicians who might be involved with the new QOTSA album include Mark Lanegan, Nick Oliveri, Dave Grohl, Elton John, Trent Reznor and Jake Shears.

Check out the actual letter (complete with odd artwork) sent to NME last month right here and the new letter, which was sent to Kerrang!, at this location.

For updates, follow the band on Facebook.