“I never learned any barre chords... all I’ve ever learned was ‘oompah oompah’. It drove me to either give up guitar or start writing music”: Josh Homme reveals how learning polka as a kid developed his off-kilter guitar playing style

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.”