{"id":194486,"date":"2026-04-12T16:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T16:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/194486\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T16:16:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T16:16:23","slug":"why-dave-grohl-joined-queens-of-the-stone-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/194486\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Dave Grohl joined Queens Of The Stone Age"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the proverbial \u2018I\u2019m outta here!\u2019, Dave Grohl left the sessions for the difficult and near-disastrous One By One record \u2013 Foo Fighters<\/a>‘ fourth \u2013 and took a break.<\/p>\n

With a working man like Dave, though, \u2018break\u2019 means \u2018go and toil elsewhere\u2019 and hooked up with Queens Of The Stone Age<\/a> as anchor on their defining Songs For The Deaf album and subsequent under-the-radar club portion of their meteoric tour.<\/p>\n

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The Queens, featuring Kyuss<\/a> alumni Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri<\/a>, had already established themselves as a commercially successful drug and drink rock party on loose-bolted mag wheels, but with Grohl\u2019s name and tornado-like grooves, QOTSA would become unstoppable.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was one of those things where everybody knew there was something wrong and everybody was frustrated but we weren\u2019t talking about it, if you know what I mean,\u201d said Foo Fighters<\/a> guitarist Chris Shiflett about the hi-tech hassles surrounding One By One. \u201cIt was just like you know something\u2019s off but you don\u2019t want to really say to the next guy (laughs) and I\u2019m really glad that Dave did. Of course, then there was that feeling of like, \u2018Wait, are we breaking up? Is that what this means, like taking a break is a nice way of saying breaking up? But it didn\u2019t take too long to work out that wasn\u2019t the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queens Of The Stone Age – No One Knows (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"Queens<\/p>\n

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Working meticulously on the record for nearly a year, it took a scrapping of the original recordings, a shift in studios from Dave\u2019s home digs in Virginia to Los Angeles, and perhaps most pointedly, Dave taking out his frustrations with some very live, very loud, very incendiary QOTSA rock to get the album finished.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Fade\u2019s Samantha and Michele, Dave expressed his admiration of Homme and Oliveri\u2019s band, his relationship with the guys instigated when Grohl and Nirvana<\/a> bassist Krist Novoselic caught Kyuss live in 1992, the association furthered when Dave asked the band to back up the Foo Fighters on their 2000 Nothing Left To Lose tour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love this band,\u201d explains Grohl. \u201cI\u2019ve known them for years and they invited me to play on this record. Seriously, they\u2019re one of my favourite bands and I haven\u2019t played drums in a long time. It\u2019s great music to play drums to. They\u2019re amazing live and they needed a drummer, so I thought I\u2019d do it. It\u2019s a nice change of pace. Not being in the spotlight is kinda nice. It\u2019s really about just playing the drums. I feel much more comfortable and confident doing this than trying to sing every night.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI called Dave and said, \u2018Can you come right now?\u2019\u201d Josh Homme told MTV on the rush to hook up, after previous drummer Gene Trautman\u2019s attention started drifting. \u201cIt was noon, and he said, \u2018I\u2019ll be there at 6.30pm. By 8pm, we had already tracked a few songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had joked before that I was pissed off they didn\u2019t ask me to play on Rated R<\/a>,\u201d Grohl said, referring to the band\u2019s second record. \u201cTheir music is really fun to play drums to because I\u2019m used to playing more back in the back 4\u20444 sort of stuff. So this was a lot more interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cFortunately, I see them differently,\u201d he adds, when asked to articulate the band\u2019s place in rock. \u201cWay above everybody else (laughs). We\u2019re far more interesting and talented than most bands. I can say that because I\u2019m not really in the band (laughs). If I were an actual member, there\u2019d be trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Queens\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Hayley Madden\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys have been making music for years and I was a big fan of Kyuss,\u201d he continues. In the early 90s, even then, the music they made was far more satisfying than most everything you hear in the mainstream; they\u2019ve always been somewhat below the radar. They\u2019ve always been making great music but now people are starting to listen and notice.<\/p>\n

“It just takes time for something like that to build and have people actually listen and know that there\u2019s something really satisfying about music that\u2019s interesting or challenging or just different. It\u2019s refreshing to play another instrument for a while. It\u2019s kind of the same feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shiflett\u2019s take on the situation mirrors Dave\u2019s assessment. \u201cI think playing with QOTSA definitely influenced his enthusiasm and motivation. I think musically he would have been influenced by them anyway because he\u2019s listened to them since he was a Kyuss fan \u2013 he\u2019s always been into that band. I think it\u2019s influenced his desire to just sort of think, \u2018Fuck it, let\u2019s just make a record we enjoy and there\u2019s no boundaries and there\u2019s nothing we can\u2019t do for any reason. Let\u2019s make a record we want to play live\u2019.<\/p>\n

“He had a lot of fun doing that, he got to play drums again night after night and, like I said, we were at a point with our record where we all had cabin fever and were totally frustrated. So everybody had to get their motivation back to make it fun and that\u2019s how he got his back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Songs For The Deaf is widely considered to be the band\u2019s crowning achievement. It\u2019s worth mentioning that the band\u2019s supergroup status was further bolstered by the addition of the Screaming Trees<\/a>\u2019 Mark Lanegan<\/a>. Out on the live trail, the band added Troy Van Leeuwen from A Perfect Circle and Failure \u2013 this line-up will likely go down in history as the band\u2019s most daunting line-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Queens don\u2019t care,\u201d said Dave on the subject of the band\u2019s approach to both the press and the business as a whole. I\u2019m not sure anybody really cares so much about the business. I know that I don\u2019t. I\u2019m just making music and I love to listen to it as well. Another thing about this band is everything musically is taken quite seriously. It\u2019s also a lot of fun and that\u2019s important. It\u2019s important to make sure you\u2019re happy doing what you do, and you\u2019re doing it for the sake of just having fun and sharing experiences like this with other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queens Of The Stone Age \/ feat. Dave Grohl – Song For The Dead (Werchter 2002) – YouTube
\n\"Queens<\/p>\n

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But ironically, the Queens record with Dave would be a bit of a chore, just like the Foo Fighters album Grohl was temporarily fleeing. Even more oddly, the album finished up the same way \u2013 a long period of analysis by paralysis, followed by a burst of raw rock\u2019n\u2019roll energy to wind it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the toughest record I\u2019ve ever made,\u201d explained Homme at the time, \u201cbecause we worked with a guy that we shouldn\u2019t have been working with so we had to get rid of him. It took three months and no record should take that long. But making records for me is the best part of the whole process. That\u2019s when the sounds in your head are realised, you know? So I don\u2019t like anybody in the middle going, \u2018Hey! Hey!\u2019 And I\u2019m like, no, get the fuck out of my way.<\/p>\n

“That doesn\u2019t mean for one second that it\u2019s my way or the highway. But we have a thing we\u2019ve been building for years. If you stand in the way of that, it\u2019s like, fuck you. I think Songs For The Deaf is a darker record because Nick and I had a lot of personal stuff going on that wasn\u2019t great. But I hope the stuff sounds hopeful; we\u2019ve always got a little light at the end of the tunnel, even if it\u2019s a flashlight and someone turns it off and goes \u2018Ha ha!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

With the potent collection of rock icons Homme had gathered, it made sense that the album was written for the live stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely. Before, I\u2019d gotten into trouble, only once or twice, where you\u2019d write something that was too difficult to do live. So this is really written, then played in the studio live, in order to make sure it\u2019s something we can whip out and do. And what\u2019s cool is that some of it seems like, \u2018Woah! How are you going to do that live?\u2019 And then we just come out and do it, and it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, I get it then, I see. That\u2019s how you do it, huh?\u2019<\/p>\n

Queens Of The Stone Age – Go With The Flow (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"Queens<\/p>\n

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\u201cMark\u2019s in the band. Three singers. We\u2019re trying to do what\u2019s undone, so far,\u201d adds Homme of the powerhouse he\u2019s assembled. \u201cThere\u2019s only a few things that haven\u2019t been done in rock\u2019n\u2019roll. I want to do all of them first. I think multiple singers, and I think getting a drummer who\u2019s been in an iconoclastic band, then switches gears to guitar, then plays drums for nine or 10 months and joins something else, simply because he knows he should \u2013 I think that\u2019s pretty classy and undone. And I think a band that\u2019s built\u2026 me, Mark, Nick, Dave and Troy, that\u2019s undone too.<\/p>\n

“Because this is the most solid band I\u2019ve ever been in, ever. I mean, Kyuss was well-equipped and ready to go, but this band is so tight right now, it reminds me of that. It reminds me of Kyuss, when Kyuss was on fire. If we played a festival, we didn\u2019t care who played before or after us. Right now, I feel like, \u2018Come on, who wants some? Anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grohl\u2019s time with Queens Of The Stone Age will always be seen as catalytic. His name, his fame and his enthusiasm for both the band and drumming pushed the Queens to a level they never would have thought possible \u2013 for example, a perplexed and quixotic Josh witnessing the band\u2019s album Lullabies To Paralyse reaching number one in the US charts\u2026<\/p>\n

This feature originally appeared in Metal Hammer Presents: Foo Fighters \u2013 Inside The Ultimate Rock\u2019N\u2019Roll Band in 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the proverbial \u2018I\u2019m outta here!\u2019, Dave Grohl left the sessions for the difficult and near-disastrous One By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-194486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}