The Record That Changed My Life: Josh Homme on Iggy Pop’s THE IDIOT (1977)
The Idiot is the most important album of my life, because it almost made me give up music forever. I have to explain this.
It was 1994, I was 21 and still playing with Kyuss. Back then I almost completely refused to listen to anything else than Kyuss. I was young and stupid, and I thought that it would make me write better songs if no other music than our own influenced me. A fallacy. I came across The Idiot by chance- and it was the beginning of the end for Kyuss.
For almost a year I listened to nothing else than this record, because for me it embodied everything that I wanted to express myself, but could not quite yet. The final track alone, Mass Production, gave me sleepless nights. There is this keyboard that is stumbling through the track drunkenly, until Iggy shouts: “By the way, I’m going for cigarettes!” A song like a Looney-Tunes-Cartoon, exactly my kind of humor. I listened to him and thought to myself: “This is exactly what I wanted to do, but Iggy has already done it, and I will never manage to do it any better.“
The Idiot was a revelation and a punch in my face at the same time. I disbanded Kyuss and stopped making music for a long time. Reset to zero, all open again. It took me two years to overcome this first big crisis of my life, and to get ready for a new challenge: to try out this mixture of forceful rock-music and crude humor myself, taking it’s lead from Iggy Pop’s The Idiot (and its twin-album Lust for Life, 1977).
I was ready for the Queens Of The Stone Age.
by Josh Homme
(Read about other artists’ album choices and reviews here)
(Iggy Pop, Josh Homme, Dean Fertita & Matt Helders performing ‘China Girl’ from The Idiot on the Post Pop Depression Tour / Berlin 5/7/2016)
[…] frontal attack there was a moment of puzzled silence. In full contrast to what had just happened, Josh Homme nodded slowly and wisely, looked over at Nick and mumbled, “Yeah.” I fell in love […]
Made my day.
This story makes Post Pop Depression even more incredible.
I had no idea! Great story!
Interesting insight to the mind of Homme. I would never think to listen to only the music you create, or the same album for such a long length, but this is interesting that there are artists that do. Thank you for sharing.
So much said in this short but passionate article. One off the best album reviews I’ve read!
I agree with Shawn, when Post Pop Depression was first anounced it was almost to good to be true. It turned out to be a very good record, we got much more than we expected.
Very interested in this new series !
Iggy should be very grateful that Homme worked with him. He hasn’t done anything worth mentioning in the last 20 years besides Post Pop Depression.
Total love for both of them! Never heard this story.
❤️❤️❤️ Josh ❤️❤️❤️
Love the video in the end. How the true fan in the end shares the stage with his idol, it’s like a fairytale.
This is one of the best stories. It totally hit the spot for me emotionally. Love them all, Iggy, Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age… Josh is a national treasure.
Saliha!!!
Iggy and Josh have similar spirits as music fans themselves. Neither losing the purity of loving music on that most basic level. I remember when Post Pop Depression was first anounced. It was almost to good to be true. Although I remember being trying not to expect to much from the collaboration. Of course, we got much more than we should do expect. Paraguay, in particular, was just the medicine we all needed. Great new series, Saliha.