Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has admitted he finds songwriting harder than ever before.
Speaking on the Let There Be Talk podcast (via Ultimate Guitar), Homme opened about the challenges of his creative process.
When asked, “If you look at your long run of what you’ve done, does it come few and far between now when you sit down and start writing, or does it come out easy?”, Homme replied:
“Based on what my dad said, which was, ‘If you’re doing something for 20 years and it’s not easier, you’re doing it wrong.'”
“The truth is, I probably shouldn’t use that one or have said it because I find writing songs much harder than it’s ever been. But I understand why.”
He continued: “In the beginning, you’re inspired and you haven’t done anything yet, and that naivete and inexperience – all your choices are just like, ‘This feels good,’ and that’s it. ‘Josh feel good. Josh walk forward. Josh play this.'”
“It’s so simple in that way. But then you’ve exhausted that phase. I like moving slow through the artistic phases, it feels like you maybe only get three – three sounds about right.”
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“The beginning – I didn’t want to get out of that phase so I stayed there a, while which was good. Can’t stay there too long, if you don’t go to the next one then you’re copying yourself or you’re not growing.
“And you’re either growing or dying. And there’s no stasis so you gotta grow into the next phase. And I think some people rush through those phases, some people don’t get to those other phases but that next one for songwriting feels like, ‘OK, lyrics are starting to be important to me, and I realize I have patterns of words so I can’t do that all the time…'” he said.
Homme continued to reveal that he feels like he’s”standing on top of the pile of the things [he’s] done and the view is different but the pile is rickety.”
“The higher the pile gets of things you’ve done, the better the view gets though. It’s incredible and I just feel as though, at this point, I can tip my hat to things I’ve done in the past, which feels nice,” he said.
“Feels like, ‘Oh this is the cousin of regular John. That’s what that is and it feels. But I have to keep going forward,’ and that gets more treacherous, standing on that pile gets more difficult now.”
For more on this topic, head over to the Classic Rock Observer.
Check out Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme on the Let There Be Talk podcast:
