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Fri 22 May 2026 19:00, UK
In rock and roll heaven, you’d better believe that there is a space saved for Jack Black.
He doesn’t have to do much aside from being in the greatest band in the world, but when you look at the kind of impact that he has made on the genre at large, no one person has had more kids pick up guitars through watching their movies than he did when School of Rock first premiered. He was a fan in the truest sense when he first started, and that kind of love only continues the more that he looks through the new kids on the block.
Because the number-one rule of being a rock and roll fan is to keep up with what the new kids are doing at every turn. It’s easy for everyone to have their own generation of music to fall back on, but even if Black loved to wax poetic about everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to The Who, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t appreciate Oasis as one of the greatest bands he had ever seen, or even shout the praises of Cameron Winter recently as well.
But the real problem that happens in rock is that people get too confused in the post-Nirvana world. Kurt Cobain seemed like one of the last massive rock stars of his generation, and even if every other band that came after him had made a record that felt like an event, there were just as many people who didn’t have to care that much about rock and roll once Cobain passed away in 1994. Then again, it’s not like the heavier sound of rock and roll ever went away, either. I mean, just look at what Kyuss had been doing around that same time.
Josh Homme was already one of the biggest names in underground music when Blues for the Red Sun had come out, and even if he wasn’t necessarily getting chart hits, Queens of the Stone Age was the first time people got to hear swagger back in rock and roll. Homme was already interested in making a robotic take on rock and roll, but compared to every other guitarist, there was no one else who was thinking of writing some of the meanest riffs that he came up with.
Sure, Black could claim that Tenacious D were schooled by Satan half the time they performed, but Homme was the first person to actually sound like the darker side of humanity whenever he performed. His voice was already incredibly smooth when he made the band’s debut record, but across Songs for the Deaf, every single guitar riff is off-kilter in the best way possible, whether it’s because of the strange time signatures of him taking certain notes out of the scale to create his own sound.
And while Kyle Gass will always be Black’s right-hand man until the day they die, he had to admit that Homme was one of the finest guitar players that’s still working today, telling ‘Rage Kage’, “I think the one episode you did with Josh Homme was special because out of all the living rock guitarists, I think he’s the best. I know we run in the same circles, but I was like ‘How did you do that?’”
Further reading: From The Vault
Then again, the reason why Homme is one of the best guitarists of his generation is that he was never really trying to be, either. He never wanted to completely emulate one of his heroes every time he performed, and some of his best moments come from when he’s making riffs that sound like they’re coming from a completely different galaxy, like the strange groove of ‘Sick Sick Sick’ or ‘My God is the Sun’.
Being original and familiar like that isn’t the easiest tightrope to walk, but even on their most recent albums, Homme is someone who’s never fully finished searching for the next musical thrill. He thrived on making music that sounded a little bit more gritty, and even if the rest of the world wasn’t as sold on it, he was plenty happy making the kinds of songs that he wanted to hear before anyone else.
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