“I’ve taken enough drugs to kill a small boy, and I think that was my inner child, actually.”

That’s quite the quote from QOTSA frontman Josh Homme’s recent chat with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. Scroll down for the full interview. This is the same guy who famously opened QOTSA’s second album with a lyrical grocery list of illicit substances! “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer” was a controversial sign of the early 2000’s times but also endures as a fan-favorite live staple.

But it’s also been 20 years since then, and Josh has been through the ringer. Hell, in 2022 alone Josh lost QOTSA friend and collaborator Mark Lanegan to long Covid, navigated contentious divorce proceedings, and survived cancer!

Zane and Josh go way back. Long enough for Zane to see a difference now that Josh is mostly clean. He asked, “How has it felt to get off them, and how has life changed for the better?”

“For me it’s also about you don’t want to be the old druggie at a party. That’s weird. This isn’t the sixties. I think it’s the natural baton pass of the next phase of my life. Just in that notion of I want to live, I don’t really smoke ciggies anymore either. It’s I think because I’ve done that enough, I’ve taken enough drugs to kill a small boy, and I think that was my inner child, actually.”

“I think Iggy (Pop) has always been my inspiration. And Iggy will have a few glasses of wine … and talking to Iggy about how he went from a junkie that was a pariah where people would say, ‘You can do whatever you want, but just don’t bring Iggy over here,’ to someone that really is such a celebrated, venerated monument that he is.”

Homme collaborated very closely with Iggy on the 2017 Iggy Pop album Post Pop Depression. In fact, they started tour rehearsals the day after David Bowie died and said Iggy was crying his way through his classic track “The Passenger”!

“He is crying but he’s not stopping because it’s Iggy. He’s piercing through that. And I’m crying. I look over and everyone that’s playing is in tears, but it sounds fucking insane, phenomenal. It’s factually the coolest thing I’ve ever been allowed to be part of ever.”

Queens Of The Stone Age’s first new album in six years In Times New Roman drops June 16. They play Starlight Theatre on September 20.

Additionally, listen to 105-1 The X for text keywords weekdays through June 23 to win a VIP trip to see QOTSA at Riot Fest in Chicago.