Queens Of The Stone Age battle illness to play London show

Illness did not stop Queens Of The Stone Age from fulfilling on their only London show of this year (February 11).

Despite frontman Josh Homme suffering from bronchitis and "chronic stupidity", the band stormed Hammersmith Apollo with a specially tailored set in an effort for the show to go on.

Homme told NME.COM: "I have what doctors describe as chronic stupidity. So I'll just book six shows straight and play until I'm destroyed. There's people around me that are like, 'Lets slow our roll a little bit', and I'm like 'No!' You know, overriding. I wanna get there, so I need to sort of try to break myself out of that habit a little bit. I'm not in a hurry but I just wanna keep working."

The singer's condition came close to forcing cancellations in Edinburgh and Leeds last week, but the band survived to London, where Homme described his condition as "about 70 per-cent" physically fit".

He continued: "There's just a bunch of stuff I can't do, I don't like it when I go and see a band and the singer can't sing, you know. It's kind of screwed up, so I'm tailoring the set so it's enjoyable to hear. There's certain songs that people wanna hear that are just kind of unattainable. So rather than blow it, and take a bag of balloons and blow those up too, we're really gonna concentrate on nailing what works, and changing some shit. There'll be some deeper album cuts tonight."

Indeed, the set saw fan favourites like 'Hanging Tree' and 'Do It Again' alongside rarities like 'Era Vulgaris' itself, a hidden track on the current album of the same name.

The only evidence of Homme's physical condition came after apparently fluffing parts of 2005 single 'Little Sister', and declaring: "I'm sorry about that, I took a lot of drugs before the show, but I obviously didn't take enough. I feel like I ruined the party."

The setlist was:

'Turnin' On The Screw'
'Hanging Tree'
'Burn The Witch'
'Misfit Love'
'Hollow'
'Do It Again'
'3's And 7's'
'Era Vulgaris'
'Go With The Flow'
'Song For The Deaf'
'Blood Is Love'
'In The Fade'
'Suture'
'Designer'
'Little Sister'
'U Can't Quit Me'
'Regular John'
'Sick, Sick, Sick'

Stupidity permitting, Queens finish their UK dates in Southampton tonight (February 12), before heading to Europe with Biffy Clyro.


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