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How Josh Homme overcame a health crisis for Queens of the Stone Age's Alive in the Catacombs
Josh Homme has held a life-long fascination with the Paris Catacombs, the world-famous ossuary sprawling across a 320km maze of tunnels and chambers 20 metres beneath the streets of the French capital.
"I heard about the catacombs as a boy in history class," he tells Double J's Dylan Lewis.
Consecrated as the Paris Municipal Ossuary in 1786, the remains of an estimated 6 million people lie there, their skulls and bones lining the walls. What could be cooler to a kid intrigued by the taboo of death?
"I think the fascination with death, trying to live your life in a way that makes dying seem like you understand it by the time you're there, has always been there since I was a little boy."
As the 52-year-old frontman of world-renowned rock band Queens of the Stone Age (QOTSA), Homme is now celebrating Alive in the Catacombs, a short film and accompanying five-track album documenting the group's subterranean performance.
Released (fittingly) on Friday, the 13th of June, the project's inspiration came to Homme "on a day off in Paris around 18 or 19 years ago. I tried to go to the catacombs and the line was like three-and-a-half hours long.
"So, it's got an even more entitled beginning," he jokes. "How can I skip the line!?"
It took a lot of patience and "conversations over many years" with French authoroties to secure the necessary permissions, says Homme.
"It's a shame the French don't have a word for bureaucracy," he deadpans. "[Also] they thought our intention was … to take advantage, maybe. But quickly, we were able to dispel that."
With a little help from local producers to grease the wheels, QOTSA were able to convince the powers that be, becoming the first band to gain legal access to the catacombs. "But definitely not the first people to play there," Homme points out.
From orchestral concerts in the late 1800s to rumoured underground raves, the Catacombs have a long music history. Cataphiles, the community of urban explorers who illegally tour the underground networks, even established a clandestine cinema.
"The police went in [2004] and there was a movie projector and all these seats. Other times, there was a full dinner table. They'd go back the next day and it's all gone, a note saying: 'Don't try to find us.'"
That long history is "part of the charm", Homme continues. "It's a very intense place to be."
Rather than bring their signature heavy rock show, QOTSA radically reworked material from their back catalogue to suit the new setting. Pared-back versions of 'Kalopsia' and 'Suture Up Your Future' feature a small string section, acoustic guitars, chains for percussion, and an electric piano hooked up to a car battery.
Homme imagined, "What if I was writing these songs now, again, for this space? The first time I ever went in there was the night before. So, we're walking with the director and sort of improvising and listening to what the Catacombs is telling you what you could do."
Uncharacteristically tender for a band famed for its grit and swagger, the lean arrangements expose and underscore Homme's lyrics and the velvety croon that's seen the musician hailed as 'the ginger Elvis'.
"I imagined it would be cathedral-like, with endless reverb. But the ceiling is dripping, the floor is gravel, and the air is thick with humidity," he explains. That haunting ambience leaked into the recordings, while stark lighting and performances augment the intimacy of the concert film.
"I will say playing there felt like getting on our knees and putting your head down. It had a very religious connotation to it. We were there to respectfully do our best."
Working with La Blogothèque, a Paris-based production company best-known for their intimate, cinéma-vérité-style Take Away Shows, QOTSA shot each song in just a few takes.
"There were more than a few times where it felt, 'Yeah, OK … we're not doing it again,'" remarks Homme. "There's no edits or fixing. It is what it is, playing down there and that's it.
"We could've done eight [songs] but were just like, 'No, man, never leave them wanting less. It's OK to stop.'" The feeling, Homme believes for him and the millions of spirits listening along, was satisfaction.
"You're talking about an audience that doesn't get a lot of performances," he adds with a smirk.
Adding a layer of unexpected significance was the fact Homme felt like he was at death's door during filming. "My temperature was not the same as everyone else's," he confesses. "So, my experience was much different."
That's an understatement. Homme was battling mounting illness related to surgery for his 2022 cancer diagnosis. In the lead-up to the Catacombs shoot on July 8, 2024, QOTSA cancelled several European tour dates for Homme to undergo emergency treatment in Venice.
"I'd been asked to stop playing for days by then, and I knew the tour was over," he admits. But despite doctor's orders, he wasn't going to let a health crisis ruin a passion project decades in the making.
"I just wanted it so bad, you know? … I broke out of the emergency room.
"I went, 'Where's the rest room?' And I was in my gown, I grabbed the rest of my shit [and] I split." Homme's travel agent was waiting at the back door with a getaway car and a rational question. "She was like, 'Why are you doing this?!'
"Because you never get the chance to show what you're really made of. I revel in [and] romanticise these moments. It felt like: 'You're here, so what are you going to do? Are you going to do it or not?'"
Homme soldiered on through the Catacombs shoot while battling a 40°C fever.
Peak rock'n'roll behaviour? Or purely irresponsible? Either way, Homme is clearly a man who lives by the words he sings in 'Suture Up Your Future': "I don't care if it hurts/Just so long as it's real.'
The day after the catacombs, "I was on an emergency flight. I was in surgery within three hours of landing." Queens of the Stone Age ended up cancelling the remainder of their 2024 shows.
The cover of Alive at the Catacombs is lifted from the film's opening shot of Homme lying dead still on an altar before rising for opening track 'Running Joke/Paper Machete'. The sequence was a matter of necessity as much as artistry.
"It was more out of mere exhaustion," explains Homme, who just needed somewhere to lie down. He remembers director Thomas Rames exclaiming, "Don't move!" "And I was like, 'Good because I can't,'" he chuckles.
The frontman upgraded to resting on a cot between takes. When the crew broke for lunch, Homme was unable to face the claustrophobic spiral staircase back up to the surface and instead lay down and took advantage of the deathly quiet.
"I thought, 'If there was ever a moment to be haunted, this is that moment,'" he remembers.
"In all honesty, I felt so held close, held fast. It felt like, 'Don't just play here. Stay here.' And I slept like a baby."
His cot situated out of sight in a poorly lit hallway, Homme rose upon hearing "two young French interns … crunching on the gravel, speaking in French.
"I just sat up and said, 'What time is it?' They both went: 'Arrrggghhh!' I was like, 'Pardon mois!'"
Alive at the Catacombs takes pride of place on a bucket list that includes starting a supergroup with Dave Grohl and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, and his idol Iggy Pop for 2016 album Post Pop Depression.
"It was always a dream to do this. For now, I'm just going to sit in the proverbial Jacuzzi of this and just bubble. I'm not going to look forward right now, I'm just going to look straight down."
