Earlier this week, rumours started flying that Reading + Leeds was going to be hit by a surprise royal visit. Who on earth could it be? Royal Blood? Christine and the Queens? Prince Philip revealing he’s using his retirement to form a nu-metal band?
Well, all those guesses turned out to be wide of the mark on Thursday when one of the best bands on the planet – Queens of the Stone Age – popped into Â鶹Éç 6 Music to play some tracks off their great new album, Villains.
The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret
Could the mighty Queens be the secret guests? Lauren Laverne tried her best to find out in an interview with frontman Josh Homme.
“We’ve got this birthday party we’re doing instead, so we can’t," dead-panned Josh. "His name’s Gary and he’s going to be seven. He loves balloons. That’s why he’s always blowing them.”
No one was having any of it, of course. And Twitter lost it!
Not everyone was happy, though!
Feel Good Hit of the Summer
Josh and the gang's first stop was Leeds at the ungodly time of 12:45pm. Who on earth would be at a festival at that time? Well, the few who made it were the luckiest festival goers ever:
NME. There were old songs. There were new songs. There were circle pits. It was a moment Leeds would never forget.
Then it was straight down the M1 to Reading, right?
Are you mad? They're flippin' rock stars! They don't spend 3.5 hours in a traffic jam!
And what was their Reading set like in the end?
Two words:
Too good.
“You know who we are? You know what we came for?” said Josh Homme after walking on stage. Everyone did: QoTSA were there to play the gnarliest, sexiest, dirtiest rock and roll imaginable and they did for a pummelling 30 minutes.
It was every hit you could ever want. And it showed just why QoTSA have headlined the whole festival before.
“We hope we gave you a night you’ll never remember,” Josh joked at the end. Er, we’re going to be remembering it for a long time, thanks.
We're also going to be watching their full set online for as long as we can. As we said before: too good.
