{"id":260392,"date":"2026-06-09T11:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/260392\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:10:12","slug":"no-one-knows-by-queens-of-the-stone-age-the-story-behind-the-song-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/260392\/","title":{"rendered":"No One Knows by Queens Of The Stone Age: The story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queens Of The Stone Age<\/a>\u2019s No One Knows is a modern-day rock classic. Today, rock radio pumps out a stream of bands that sound the same, but No One Knows was an exception during 2002-2003. There\u2019s no denying the song\u2019s catchy riff and vocal melody, but if you pay close attention to the song\u2019s structure, it makes for an unlikely single. Even to former QOTSA bassist Nick Oliveri.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they were talking about doing it as a single, I was like: \u2018This is a five-minute song, dude,” says Oliveri. “There\u2019s a jam part in here, a bass part, a drum thing. What do you mean, single?\u2019, y\u2019know? They\u2019re going to cut this song up. The last thing I want to do is have anybody edit our song. But we kind of felt we could get behind any of the songs, and whatever single they wanted to choose, the one they wanted to get behind, we just said go ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And Oliveri is right. Queens\u2019 2002 album Songs For The Deaf <\/a>contained several potential singles, among them Go With The Flow, Gonna Leave You and First It Giveth. The follow-up to 2000\u2019s Rated R, it was yet another remarkably consistent album from beginning to end. It was also recorded by what was unquestionably the group\u2019s strongest line-up: Oliveri, singer\/guitarist Josh Homme<\/a> and Foo Fighters<\/a> drummer Dave Grohl<\/a> were the main players, with guests including Mark Lanegan<\/a>, who sang on a few tracks: Song For The Dead, Hangin\u2019 Tree, Song For The Deaf.<\/p>\n

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When Oliveri first heard an early version of Go With The Flow he was reminded of one of the standouts on Rated R: \u201cI remember thinking the staccato thing is like Lost Art [Of Keeping a Secret] or something. I was like, \u2018Is this the brother song or the sister song?\u2019 I liked that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

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And when asked about if he had any memories of the writing and recording sessions for No One Knows he replies: \u201cWhen we were recording it I was thinking, \u2018This is badass; we\u2019re playing with Dave Grohl!\u2019 No, I\u2019m kidding [laughs]. That was pretty much a Homme tune from start to finish. I think Lanegan lent a hand in that one as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cMe joining the band was more about playing the drums than joining Queens Of The Stone Age,\u201d said Grohl, who, of course, played drums with Nirvana<\/a> before starting Foo Fighters. \u201cPlaying on their album was more about playing drums seriously for the first time in eight years than actually joining the band. So it was a really cool experience in that it really recharged that love of crazy rock music, which is why I started doing this in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there was no denying that the song was quite a catchy little ditty, the hard-to-decipher lyrics made fans wonder what the song was about, exactly. Drugs (\u2018We get these pills to swallow\u2019)? An expedition via desert (\u2018I journey through the desert\u2019)\u2026 or ocean (\u2018I drift along the ocean\u2019)? Or a love song (\u2018I realise you\u2019re mine\u2019)?<\/p>\n

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When Homme was interviewed by MTV shortly after the release of Songs For The Deaf, he admitted that he was as much in the dark as fans: \u201cIt\u2019s a mystery what that song\u2019s about. No one knows. It\u2019s kind of almost Beatles<\/a>-esque with a driving beat, and it\u2019s kind of jumpy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queens of The Stone Age – No One Knows – YouTube
\n\"Queens<\/p>\n

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In addition to the song\u2019s catchiness, its whacked-out video had many plays on MTV. In it, a trio of band members (Homme, Oliveri and Lanegan) play hunters, travelling by jeep, who accidentally hit a deer in the road. But the deer has the last laugh on the Queens, when he snaps back to life, smacks each hunter in the head, takes their vehicle and terrorises a pack of boy scouts singing by the campfire, before mounting the Queens\u2019 members heads on a wall. It sounds like some sort of drug-fuelled hallucination, but it somehow worked well, and it was both an original and popular video.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the SBI: Generation website, Homme explained that the group had little to do with the video\u2019s plot, as he wanted to leave it in the hands of the director, Dean Karr: \u201cOur thing is that we like to party, and you can\u2019t have every video be like two guys bouncing off each other, it\u2019s gotta have some kind of sexuality and alcohol abuse and some kind of looseness to it. We are that vague.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Karr explained the video to Homme at 5.30 in the morning, during a birthday party for the director. \u201cBasically it\u2019s the drunken ramblings of Dean Karr,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

Queens Of The Stone Age were so eager to play their Songs For The Deaf tunes that they hit the concert trail a few months before its August 2002 release. They remained on the road from May 2002 through January 2004. which is a long tour by anyone\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n

With such an intense touring schedule (perhaps too intense, as Oliveri was dismissed from the band after it wrapped up), it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise to hear that it was while the band were on the road that the bassist realised No One Knows was taking the band to the next level: \u201cWhen we started getting hotel rooms!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queens Of The Stone Age\u2019s No One Knows is a modern-day rock classic. Today, rock radio pumps out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-260392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260392","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=260392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}