Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme: ‘Carl Perkins made me want to play guitar’

Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has revealed that rockabilly artist Carl Perkins was the artist who made him first want to pick up a guitar.

Homme explained that he decided he wanted to be a musician after he saw Perkins play and found out that he had written the song “Blue Suede Shoes” for his idol Elvis Presley. Perkins – who died in 1998 – took part in the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ recordings at Sun Studio in Memphis alongside Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.

Speaking in a new promo clip for the Dave Grohl directed movie Sound City – about the Sound City Studios recording facility in Los Angeles – Homme said:

“The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes’… so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. That’s when I realised I wanted to play guitar.”

In the clip, which you can watch below, Homme added that his first musical memory was of The Doors, saying: “My first musical memory is probably my dad listening to The Doors. He saw The Doors in DC while on a cross country trip with his brother, and so that memory always stuck out to me… he was able to go and watch them play.”

Sound City Studios was where Nirvana’s Nevermind album was recorded as well as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, Neil Young’s After The Gold Rush, Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers’ Damn The Torpedoes and Rage Against The Machine’s self-titled debut. The film Sound City will be distributed by Roswell Films, which is part of the Foo Fighters’ Roswell Records label.

A new track from Josh Homme, titled “Nobody To Love”, recently hit the internet. The song, which was co-written by composer and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds producer Dave Sardy, is featured in the film End Of Watch featuring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Homme is currently working on the new Queens Of The Stone Age album.