Tool producer Joe Barresi discussed working on Queens of the Stone Age’s debut album for cheap money in a new Dean Delrey interview.
“Immediate access is nice, sometimes you’re like, ‘What was that song? What did it sound like?’ And you dial it instantly on Spotify or Apple Music, and you can call it up instantly. But I still buy. I think, at some point, even though I just did the Chevelle record and it came out, I just bought it.
“And in my contract says I get 20 copies of it for free, I got my 20 copies which I gave out to people, and then I bought another 15 copies because that supports music. So record label is a whole different beast, I couldn’t even imagine what the deal is like on Spotify, all I know is that the royalties on a record are different.
“If the royalty money comes in, then I’m stoked, and if it doesn’t… You don’t make records anyway for the reason you think it’s going to sell any copies, you do it because you want to do it. I had been working with a certain producer doing these records, and there’s this thing when we were going to do…
“I chose to do Queens of the Stone Age because Josh [Homme] was like, ‘Hey man, I’m trying to get a deal and nobody’s biting, and I’ve got these songs… Do you want to work on this?’ And I’m like, ‘Send me some music.’
“And he sends me a cassette tape and I put it on, and ‘Mexicola’ comes on, and I’m like, ‘I’m in! Let’s just do this. It’s killer.’ And I did it because I knew him and I enjoyed his music. And I could have been making $40,000 dollars working on some other crap that I didn’t enjoy.
“I worked with Josh on this thing coming out of his pocket, pennies on the dollar doing a band that had an identity and a sound. So you never think it’s going to turn into anything, you hope it does.
“But to me, I’d much rather make records for the band. I was always like that, I never picked anything because the money was insane or because I thought it was the thing to do.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
