Jesse Hughes, lead singer for the Eagles Of Death Metal, has a sore throat. Our first interview date was scrapped because of it and what you're reading here is the second attempt. He is better now and has his act together and wants to talk about it. The band's second album, Death By Sexy, produced by and played on by Queens of the Stone Age guitarist/singer Joshua Homme, combines outlandish English blues with a sort of American R&B sensibility funneled through a Zappa/Beefheart tunnel of madness. Actually, it's pretty impossible to define but a helluva lot of fun to listen to. And when Hughes described the process for Ultimate-Guitar, you realize there is more here than caricatures and hyperbole - there is careful crafting and hot licks.
Ultimate-Guitar: How's the voice?
Jesse: The voice is doing okay. Yeah, we hired a couple of NASA engineers to come in here and they injected me with space-age technology. That was a bad joke, but whatever. Sorry.
The first time you listened to all the tracks on Peace Love Death Metal from front to back, how would you describe what it was that you created?
Well, we actually had a goal when we recorded that record. Joshua's goal was that, because Joshua is kind of the executive in our total gang if you will, what he was really trying to do there was capture my bedroom demos, kind of completely and perfectly. The first time we listened to it front to back I'm like, "Yeah, we captured the shittiness of the bedroom demos. That's for sure." But really what we were going for was I wanted it to sound - because we weren't using bass - I wanted it to sound like the guitars in "Twentieth Century Boy" by T-Rex. That's what I wanted the whole album to sound like. I think sometimes your best attempts to achieve something fail and you come up with something else. The Rolling Stones' best attempt to be Chuck Berry failed and they ended up being The Rolling Stones. I think we failed at maybe our initial goal, but succeeded in the unintended goal, which was to sound like total crap - no, I'm just kidding.
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| "Josh Homme's goal was to capture my bedroom demos, completely and perfectly." |
You mention bands like The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and T-Rex, and even Beefheart is listed on the CD. Were these bands that you were heavily into? Were you trying to capture some of that magic that they created?
Absolutely, man. I'm an obsessive guy. I mean, I like all music, but if you look at the playlist that I'm listening to from day to day, it's probably about three bands and it's probably about three songs over and over and over again. I've always kind of fancied myself following in the footsteps of my heroes, if you will. Like I don't believe there's anything new under the sun and I ain't here to tell anybody I fucking created anything. I'm just saying it's the same stuff that I'm doing as the other guys, and I'm trying to do it as honestly as possible.
In terms of your guitar playing, is this the way that you really play guitar? This kind of crazy, kind of helter skelter, Captain Beefhearty, drunk Keith Richards kind of thing?
Absolutely. "Dropout Boogie" by Captain Beefheart is one of my all-time favorite fucking songs. Probably one of the single-most influential songs in terms of how the rhythms are constructed and the breakdowns. It's just an A-B song, you know. But it's how I play guitar because the instrument I started playing was flute. And I have very short, fat fingers. It's true. See, I wanted to play guitar for like four years, I think. So when I wanted to pick up the guitar I knew, a, that I was never ever gonna have fingers like Jimmy Page. I was never ever gonna be able to play chords. I was never going to be able to do scales and shit like that. I just knew that. But I knew that Keith Richards had short, fat fingers and that he was the sloppiest and laziest guitarist of all time. So how did he do it? So I simply?This is a God's honest true story. With Joshua's help, we used a DVD player in stop motion, and on the "Gimme Shelter" video, I figured out what tuning Keith Richards was using. We transcribed it and I used Keith Richards' tuning, but instead of taking the sixth string off like he does, I use all the strings and we double the top-two strings. And in doubling the top-two strings, you get a bass frequency.
Interesting. So tell me the tunings of the strings then.
Sure, man, I don't mind. It's G, G, D, G, B, D.
So that's obviously a big key to the sound of what you're creating? That Stonesy, Faces, Humble Pie kind of thing?
Well, Humble Pie is my father's favorite band. "30 Days in the Hole," those fucking songs impacted me greatly in my life. I mean, 'cause to me the music that moves me the most is the music with the maximum posing potential. The kind of music you can stand in front of a fucking mirror and raise your gauntlet of rock. You know what I mean? That's the music that gets me going, dude. And that was like Suzi Quatro when I was a kid, and even The Runaways and Joan Jett. 'Cause the first two records that I ever got were Kiss' Destroyer and then my mom bought me the Queens of Noise.
How do you create this marriage between this high concept Eagles of Death Metal project and turning in real and legitimate performances as a songwriter and a vocalist? Is it a natural kind of merging?
It is. Without sounding pretentious, man, it came naturally to me. I never really wanted to be in a rock band. I mean, this is the truth. I never tried to be in a rock band. I never called anyone up and said, "Do you want to be in a band?" I never did any of that. My best friend, Joshua Homme, came to me and said, "Dude, you've got a couple of good songs. Let's go make a record." So we made a record and then the first tour, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. We were with Placebo and I think the fifth show that we played with Placebo was the sixth show I had ever played in my life. You know, it was that kind of deal. So I had to learn everything on the road and I didn't have the luxury of getting to learn it in front of 12 people at a little club. I had to learn it in front of 5,000 people at the Commadore Ballroom or something like that. You know? So I was in a situation of fucking sink or swim. And I realized that people only know what you tell them, man. I really had a true epiphany in the truest sense of the word onstage, where these people only know what I'm telling them. And I better tell them they're having the greatest fucking time of their lives and that I'm the white Little Richard that's coming to save their souls. That's what I better be fucking telling them because a few of them might believe it.
So Josh has been instrumental in your development as a player musician?
Joshua's not only my best friend, he's the best friend I've ever had in my fucking life. But he's the true captain of our gang. And instrumental is almost an understatement. That man has done things that nobody would ever do for anyone just because it's in his nature. The first album was recorded in such a way, also, specifically to give me room to develop, to give me room to become a songwriter. Because by the time we got to Death By Sexy, I knew that in order to make the first album not look like a fluke we had to expand a little bit. Like move out without losing kind of our raw sensibilities. And my songwriting had to step up. It couldn't just be A-B-A-B songs. There had to be some sophistication in there, some bridges. Oh, my God, that's a new term for me, you know? I remember Joshua came in and you can hear Joshua's writing, because Joshua wrote more on this new album. I basically wrote all the songs, but about four or five of them were only half-finished. And like in "Cherry Cola," there's a bridge. That's a purely fucking Joshua Homme bridge.
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| "I don't believe there's anything new under the sun and I ain't here to tell anybody I f--king created anything." |
Where else was Joshua sort of involved in helping you put things together?
Let's see, "Cherry Cola," and "Just Nineteen." "Just Nineteen" was a B-side in England that I had improvised into a computer and it was just two chords. And here, this is an example of Joshua's genius. This is an example of the shit I love about Josh. When I wrote that song, "Just Nineteen," I was hearing, I was trying to capture the early eighties David Bowie, where he always ended his phrases in that "hu-ha." You know what I mean? Where his voice lilted up? That's exactly what I was looking for. I didn't tell anyone that and I kind of failed in the demo. But Josh heard it. So when we go into the studio he goes, "Is what you're looking for that early-eighties David Bowie shit?" I'm like, "Dude, get out. Get the fuck off the block."
So he got it instantly.
He got it instantly and he took two minutes because this motherfucker's a genius. This dude's got fingers longer than my arm, you know? He can hit any chord he wants to and he has an ear. He has perfect pitch. The dude's a 6'5 man made for this business, is the bottom line. But he would figure out the chord that we would need to go to, to tie everything in together. That's why it's a three-chord song now instead of a two-chord song that it started out as.
Talking about "Cherry Cola," what is that strange guitar tone in that song?
That is actually Josh playing that guitar line. And that is a Maton guitar. I play exclusively Matons. I just love the Maton, man. The Maton takes all that dirty, raunchy sound and puts it in. It basically takes the best of the shitty Teisco Del Rays and the shitty Airlines and those kinds of guitars and puts them in a masterful quality. But anyway, that's Joshua's reverb.
How long have you been playing Matons?
I've been playing Matons for two-and-a-half years. I started out with a Teisco Del Ray, that was my very first guitar, which I love. And then I went to the Reverends. I still do play my Reverend every once in a while. Now it's just Matons. And Matons has given me my own model, which I love them for that. It's called the Red Genius with lightning bolt F-holes instead of (regular) F F-holes.
And continuing with the types of amps you used on the album?
On the first record, I used only one Gorilla GG-25. That was it. And that's really the key. Brian May once said, "You don't need big amps to have big sounds." And that's truly an operating principle that we kind of believe in. On this new album, we kind of experimented. I'm playing a Zinky. But I played nothing over the size of our practice amps. A couple PD Decades were in there. And then we have some secret weapons that I can only tell you this: That I discovered them under the remains of Air Force parts at an electronics junkyard in the valley.
So if you tell me you'd have to kill me, right?
If I tell you, the CIA will land at your house in four and a half minutes and you will all be destroyed.
What about a track like "Solid Gold"? It's got some real strange guitars in there, some acoustics, I think.
Let's see, "Solid Gold," "Queen Bee and Baby Duck," "I Want You So Hard" - those songs came to me in visions. I know it sounds gay, but those songs were written in their entirety. "Solid Gold" is my tribute to the Everly Brothers, man. And what my vision was on that song was, I loved the way the Everly Brothers used acoustic guitars to cement the rhythm. Basically, the way they played, it has the effect of a high hat. So that's really what I wanted. So Maton kind of tweaked out a Country Jumbo guitar for me. They sent me a Country Jumbo acoustic guitar - it was the first time I had ever played acoustic guitar ever. Still can't even play the song live because I wrote a song too hard to play. It's true.
Really, Joshua engineered a traditional stacking of sounds. It starts off with an acoustic. The acoustic is the main line that ties everything. Everything is built around it. It's a simple drumbeat with no fills. And everything is played like a drum. And here's our other secret: The way I build my songs and write my songs is on the James Brown principle, which is every instrument is played like a drum. That's really how my guitar sound comes about because I'm playing it like a drum. It's open tuning that I'm chording and riffing inside. But all my licks, instead of a floor tom or rack tom or something, it's the A or the G.
You have a second guitar player in the band?
Yeah, David Catching, one of the greatest motherfucking guitarists of all time.
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| "The vision I had of the perfect band is the band that I have right now." |
How is it that you work together? How do you work out who plays what parts and that type of thing?
Normally, if I'm not up to snuff to play the part, David plays it. But I like to play all the glory parts and I don't want David to be seen or known in any way, shape, or form at all. No, no really, David Catching is actually an interesting story altogether because when we went in to make Peace Love Death Metal, A, I probably hadn't slept in 14 days because I was high on speed, and C?I'm gonna skip B, we're gonna go right to C! We had a vision, we have a three-record plan. Josh has got some of the most profound ideas in rock n' roll, but the three-album plan is one of his amazing ideas. We knew that the only way I was ever gonna get out of Joshua's shadow from the get-go go?.Because from the get-go, the only reason people really looked at the band in the very beginning was because of Josh. And that's okay, man. That's the way it should be. You'd have to be a real asshole to have a problem with that, you know? Even getting to be in a side project of a band with the imminence of Queens is a fucking honor and it's a gift. That's how I look at it.
But we always knew that we were gonna have to tour and that we were gonna have to have a band. And ironically and interestingly enough, my ideal band, the vision I had of the perfect band, is the band that I have right now. I always knew David Catching was gonna be the only motherfucker who could ever understand what I was trying to do and get this music. And I always knew that Gene Trautmann ultimately would be the only drummer who was ever gonna be able to really fucking fully understand the rhythm ideas that were going on next to Josh. And Brian "Big Hands" O'Connor, I never ever envisioned bass in the band ever. The first album has no bass, except for on two songs. The first, what, three or four tours we never had a bass player. Yeah, it was the uniqueness of the double-stringing that gave us the bass frequencies.
That is an intriguing element, I mean, you can count on your hands the number of bands that don't have a bass player.
And what's funny is that when I tell people we don't have a bass player that we toured. They had been at our shows and they didn't realize it. And that's different than say like, with the White Stripes, another fucking amazing band, you know they don't have bass. It's actually the absence of the bass that is a sound.
And then you have all those bands that have like the keyboard bass like The Doors and stuff.
Absolutely, man. But this, using the delta blues theory of playing the bass line and the lead line at the same time the way the delta bluesmen would sing along with themselves with their guitar. And doubling the strings just accidentally gave us this unique phenomenon.
What was the Coachella Valley Music Festival like?
Oh dude, that was like somebody took my nuts and put them in a ringer and just kept on ringing. That was a hometown show for me, man. It would be a complex story to try to explain to you the uniqueness of my situation with my hometown. I mean, I never had any friends. My only friend in high school was Josh Homme. I wore a suit. I was Alex P. Keaton in fucking high school, straight-A student. I went to Boyd State. I mean, shit, I went to Clemson University. I was a screaming square and I never gave a fuck. I was never the kid who wanted to fit in with all the kids who wouldn't accept me. Just all the kids who wouldn't accept me, I wanted them to die because I didn't want to get any more shit for not wanting to fit in. You know, it was like, "I don't want you to like me. Just leave me the fuck alone." So walking on to a stage, where literally I walked on to a stage and saw every dude who ever picked on me in my life and every kid who didn't fuck me on purpose. I saw them all right there.
What was it like playing with all those bands? Did it give you a sense of what all these modern bands were doing and where music was headed? Did it give you any sense of yourself as a musician?
There's a couple of special of feelings you get. Like playing Conan O'Brien, you feel like you fucking made it. It's like graduating from Harvard. And playing the Coachella Fest and being up there, I mean, there were bands like?. I mean, Damien Marley. Kanye West was there. Madonna was there. It was a weird mix. Sigur Ros. All kinds of strange bands. Depeche Mode. But it felt good, man. I'm not gonna lie to you. It felt really good.
When you start out in a band like this, where you're constantly being asked, "What is it like to be in the shadow of Josh Homme?" And you don't have a problem with it. To work your way out of his shadow on your own efforts, you never really stop to think, "Am I making music that's vital? Am I doing anything that's fucking valid?" You know what I mean? It gave me a moment to do that and it felt good. My mother was there at Coachella. Danny DeVito introduced us. There's nothing fucking cooler than that. And every day in this job that I have is a gift, but the story that makes up how I got here and all of the interesting characters in our gang, is a really wonderful story, man. It's a freaky story, too. And sometimes it's scary.
And what about your solo record Fabulous Weapons? Are you working on it?
You know, I've basically worked on it. Some of it's been tied up in limbo. The Department of Homeland Security didn't want it to be released because of, you know, the violence that it might cause among women. But that's technical talk. Davy and I are actually getting ready to go into Rancho to put the finishing touches on Fabulous Weapons. And then I think we're also getting ready to release all the bedroom demos from both Peace Love Death Metal and Death By Sexy into a double-album.
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| "The music that moves me the most is the music with the maximum posing potential." |
So we can hear where all these songs were really hatched?
Yeah. And there's a little bit of vanity in there. But really, for people that love music, to see how the bedroom demos started and to see really where they went to, you achieve a couple of things. You get to see a pretty interesting transformation. You get to see a pretty freakish development of a young, white Republican turning into a left-wing Little Richard from hell. And then you really get a chance to truly see the genius of Joshua Homme. He gets a lot of cred, but he also doesn't get a lot of credit where he deserves it, man. And I kind of take that shit personally because he's, A, my best friend, and he's also one of the baddest motherfucking producers that's ever walked into a studio. You get a chance to see what he can see and what he can do. And taking some sounds that I accidentally achieved in my bedroom because I was so high, I sat on my amp, and fucked up the knobs, and figuring out how to replicate that in a studio situation is a fucking genius moment, man. You know, it really is. I personally, I want the world to fucking know what a badass my best friend is.
Are you a person that takes drugs to be creative?
No, I'm eight months sober right now. Drugs, I loved speed and speed definitely is a catalyst. I'm not gonna count out what drugs did for me, but I was going through an entire process of transformation because of rock n' roll. It confused me a little bit. You know, sometimes you feel like the genie is in the bottle or in the eight ball. But that's not really the case. You go through phases in songwriting. I've gotten about 60 songs out of the two phases. We've got most of the third record already written. I'm a dad and I'm a performer, too, now. That's the reality of this business. You've gotta take that shit seriously. You're a performer. And I'm not just responsible for myself, and I wanna be around and enjoy some of this shit, you know?
Can you give me a couple of lines on what the solo record might be like? I'm assuming it will be a little different than the Eagles' stuff?
It is. Quite frankly, it's gonna be more of a cross between Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, meets T-Rex and Little Richard's asshole.
Have you ever met any of those heroes of yours?
I've met little Richard at the Hyatt with Crispin Glover. And it was the most outlandish, wild thing that's ever happened to me in my life. I saw The Stones. I've never had a chance to meet them. But I can tell that they're a band that I probably don't want to meet. I want to maintain the myth of who I think they are because I'm a fan first. That's how I approach music, man. I'm a fucking rock fan first, and I make music so that a bunch of rock fans can all show up together and we can have a good time. That's really how I look at it. And I hate getting my feelings hurt when I meet my heroes and they suck. It's heartbreaking. Joan Jett is probably?.If you go back and you look at the pictures of Eagles of Death Metal in the first Placebo tour, you will see that I am dressing exactly, identical, meticulously to Joan Jett. The Pro Ked High Tops, the jeans, the bandana bracelets, all that shit, that's Joan Jett. And we have an opportunity now to go on tour with her, and that's probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me.
You guys are touring right now?
Yeah, we're on tour right now. We're on basically a headlining tour. We're in Chicago tonight. It's been a fucking sold-out, smash success. The crowds have been great. I've introduced them to new things. I start asking the crowd to repeat "Amen" to me like it's a sexified, evil church or something. The shows have been off the hook. The chicks, I mean everything. Because I sing for ladies. I make rock n' roll to make chicks dance. Let's just cut to the fucking chase. I don't want no fucking boy parties, you know, showing up. I don't want a bunch of sweaty dudes who like wanna touch. That's not what I want. I want a bunch of chicks who are getting worked into a sexual frenzy and I can catch what they're about to be throwing after the show. You know what I mean?
2006 © Steven Rosen
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