Kyuss Drummer Reached Out To Josh Homme About a Possible Reunion
Last summer, Queens of the Stone Age bandleader Josh Homme admitted he’s mulled over the possibility of getting back together with Kyuss, the revered stoner rockers he played with before their 1995 split — a breakup that essentially led to QOTSA’s emergence. Now, original Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork has revealed that he’s tried to contact Homme about just such a reunion.
According to Blabbermouth, Bjork last week (March 18) discussed his part in the Kyuss reunion attempts with TotalRock’s The Hobo on the Radio show. (Listen to the podcast below.)
Almost a year ago, in July 2020, Homme remarked of Kyuss’ demise, “There have been times I thought it cannot end that way, and the only real way to end it correctly now would be to play.”
But does his former bandmate agree?
“I thought it was some healthy words and a healthy perspective on things,” Bjork says now of Homme’s comments. “And it even went to the extent that a friend of mine was like, ‘Hey, you know what? Maybe it’s a good time to reach out to him.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, it’s not a bad idea, man.’ … I think there’s no reason for us to just kind of … say, ‘Hey, why don’t we just go back and kind of try and plug into that time. … Maybe there’s the ability where we can go back before all this stuff happened and try and communicate from that place. I don’t know. Maybe that’s a fantasy. I don’t know.”
Can the fantasy come to fruition? Before it can, Homme needs to return Bjork’s call.
The drummer says he “reached out” to the Queens of the Stone Age rocker after his Kyuss reunion comments made the rounds in the music press last year: “And he actually was like, ‘Yeah, let’s talk, and I’ll get back to you,'” Bjork says of the frontman’s response. “And I was like, ‘All right. Cool, man.’ And then it never happened. So I don’t know what to say about that.”
It looks like, for now, all the drummer can do is wonder exactly what plans Homme had in mind for Kyuss to play again and “end it correctly.”
“It’s an interesting comment,” Bjork adds, “and I can totally relate to his feeling because I was really bummed the way that Kyuss broke up in ’95; I didn’t want it to end that way. So what we should have done is never broke up. Had we known as young dudes — which, let’s face it, we were young, and it’s hard to do — had we known how to keep a band together, we could have just had that band moving all along and taking breaks from time to time to pursue other things. … There’s always a way to do it, and it just takes communication.”
Kyuss also count lead vocalist John Garcia and early Queens of the Stone Age bassist Nick Oliveri as former members. Bjork, Garcia and Oliveri reformed under the name Kyuss Lives! in 2010 before a lawsuit from Homme barred them from using the moniker — the band then changed their name to Vista Chino. Bjork now performs with Oliveri in a new group called Stoner.