Josh Homme’s Generators: The Psychology of Sex in the Desert and Song in the Holy Catacombs
By Angela Perez
I. The Young Homme: Sex, Power, Escape
When Homme was a teenager in the desert, the generator party was his initiation rite.
It was an escape - from suffocating suburban boredom, small-town conservatism, the petty, measured expectations of adults.
A space with no adult rules, where volume itself was a declaration of autonomy.
And it was unmistakably about sex.
Luring girls with the promise of chaos, heat, and the primal safety of belonging to the band of outlaws who controlled the generator. Getting high, getting drunk, and getting laid under desert stars that felt both infinite and indifferent.
Raw social power: I have the generator. I control the party. I make the rules.
This was pure id:
Hedonism without guilt.
Power without consequence.
Sex as conquest.
The performance of freedom - for himself and everyone watching.
II. The Artistic Myth Later
Over time, Homme - and those who mythologize him - reframed those parties.
The desert became a blank canvas for self-invention. The generator transformed into a symbol of punk-rock autonomy, the DIY ethic stripped of urban irony.
Art created in a vacuum, with no industry suits to please, no censors to appease. And much of that is true.
But it’s also retrospective justification layered over the simple, urgent truth of teenage rebellion: horny kids, cheap drugs, and the narcotic promise that you could become anything out there.
Homme himself has rewritten that history many times, recognizing now how much more profound it was than it seemed at the time. Like any great scene, no one realized they were making history when all they wanted was to get out of their heads - and into someone else’s pants.
III. Aging and Consequence
Fast-forward 30 years.
Homme is no longer the desert kid.
He’s in his 50s.
He’s lived through a public divorce, restraining orders, tabloid humiliations.
He’s a father. He knows his kids are watching.
He’s survived health scares and substance use struggles.
And he lives in a culture that no longer gives an indulgent wink to "sex, drugs, and rock and roll." He can’t credibly stand on stage and say: I just want to get fucked up and fuck. Though, let’s be honest - he pretty much did exactly that last year on the Nero tour, and folks lapped up every second of it. He’s still got it going on. For now.
But time waits for no man - not even Homme.
He knows it.
The audience knows it.
And the myth - if it’s to survive - has to mature.
We don’t know exactly what’s in his head now. But we can assume he’s at least trying to grow up with the myth.
IV. The Catacombs: A Performance of Limits
So he stages a performance in the catacombs of Paris.
It’s the perfect ritual of middle age: an intentional confrontation with mortality, reputation, legacy, and confinement.
The catacombs are a space of absolute limit.
There’s no horizon. No wandering. No possibility of disappearing into the night with someone new.
It’s no longer about getting your dick sucked behind an ancient boulder.
Instead, it becomes:
Exorcism: Purging the old self.
Confession: Acknowledging the cost of hedonism.
Contradiction: The same generator that once enabled freedom now powers a show in a tomb.
The symbol is inverted.
V. The Psychoanalytic Pivot
What changed isn’t the generator.
What changed is Homme.
At 17, the generator was about sex as conquest, about controlling the space so he could control the narrative - and the bodies in it.
Now, in the catacombs, sex itself is haunted.
The libido that once fueled him also burned bridges, marriages, friendships. The raw desire to dominate space - and people - becomes suspect, even to him.
The audience knows the cost now.
And the catacombs force an admission of limits - limits he spent decades refusing to acknowledge.
VI. The Death of Hedonism, The Birth of Legacy
At 50+, he can’t just fuck his way out of it.
Or fight his way out of it.
Or use irony and sarcasm to joke his way out of it.
So he plays among the bones.
It’s:
An admission of mortality.
An acknowledgment that freedom without limit becomes meaningless.
A symbolic burial of the hedonist persona.
A gamble on survival - not through youth and sex, but through art that can stand in the graveyard of memory.
Something he thought up nearly 20 years ago. But wanting it then and doing it now are different things entirely. At 30, the idea of performing among bones was an aesthetic provocation - a sexy, gothic fuck-you to polite taste.
It was cool in the same way wearing skull rings was cool. It was death as theater.
At this age, post-surgery, post-divorce, with the kids watching, the catacombs aren’t just a set. They’re a mirror. Mortality isn’t conceptual anymore. It’s personal. The show becomes ritual, exorcism, confession.
The generator isn’t there to fuel freedom. It’s there to rage against the dying of the light.
VII. What This Says About Homme Now
He’s still the same man in many ways.
He still wants control.
He still wants to seduce an audience.
He still wants to be the center of the party.
But now the party is in a tomb.
That’s the aging rocker’s truth:
You don’t stop wanting.
But you have to face what wanting costs you.
VIII. The Generator as Self-Portrait
In the end, the generator is Homme himself.
A machine of raw power.
Capable of illuminating and deafening.
Dependent on fuel - chemical, sexual, emotional.
Loud, insistent, necessary.
But in the catacombs?
It’s not a celebration anymore.
It’s a dirge.
It’s the refusal to go silent in a place built for silence.
It’s the ultimate seduction - of death itself.
And if any human body can pull that off, well, surely it’s Homme, ain’t it?
