Josh Homme has spelled out what he meant when he told a Detroit crowd not to let corporate executives dictate their behaviour, and the answer has almost nothing to do with cigarettes.
The remark came at Ford Field, where the Queens of the Stone Age frontman lit a cigarette on stage in open defiance of the arena's anti-smoking policy, a policy that carries fines of up to $10,000 for a violation. He smoked through part of the set and told the crowd not to let the people who run the building tell them what to do.
Speaking to Consequence afterwards, he narrowed the target. "It had nothing to do with smoking," he said, pointing instead at monopolies and corporations that charge $85 for parking and $30 for a beer and then map out where a paying customer may and may not stand. "It's about controlling fun."
The cigarette, in his framing, was incidental. What he objects to is being managed through an evening somebody has already paid for, an experience he compared to having fun under the supervision of hall monitors. He also conceded the obvious contradiction in the position, that the band are inside the same corporate machine when they play a stadium, and argued the answer is to infiltrate it and turn a Monday into a Saturday rather than refuse the booking.
The timing sits just ahead of a record. Perfecth, the band's ninth album, arrives on 30 October through Matador Records, trailed by the singles Easy Street and Insignificant Other. Homme has explained the title as a joke about nothing being perfect while everything seems to be near enough, and the album grew partly out of the stripped-back show the band played in the Parisian Catacombs in 2024, released as Alive In The Catacombs.
It follows In Times New Roman from 2023, and the reception to that record set the terms this one will be judged on: dark, knotty rock that has never gone out of its way to be liked. We covered the $10,000 smoking fine he ignored in Detroit and the announcement of Perfecth when each landed.
The facts
- Homme lit a cigarette on stage at Ford Field in Detroit
- Violating the venue's smoking policy can carry a $10,000 fine
- He made the follow-up remarks in an interview with Consequence
- Queens of the Stone Age release Perfecth on 30 October 2026
- Matador Records is putting out the album
- Easy Street and Insignificant Other preceded the album
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