The Vampyre of Time and Memory by Queens of the Stone Age

Album: ...Like Clockwork (2013)

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This angsty piano ballad finds Josh Homme lamenting, "Does anyone ever get this right? I feel no love." Homme admitted to NME that he hated the song at first. "I was like, 'Who wants to hear this?' And Brody (Dalle, Homme's wife) was like, 'Who f---ing cares?' And I was like, 'Oh yeah, that's right.' You need to make music for yourself. If you do it right you can learn something about yourself and maybe even make yourself better."
While on an operating table receiving knee surgery, Josh Homme nearly died from undisclosed complications. Incapacitated and bedridden for several months following the operation, he started thinking about the things that matter in life. This was the first song the Queens frontman wrote once he was finally able to pick up a guitar again. "The wife and I have a little shack out the back of our house, so I put a little studio in there," Homme told the Irish Independent. "She encouraged me to go in there as much as possible and told me not to worry about what I wrote. So, I went in and the first song I wrote was 'The Vampyre of Time and Memory.'"
The song finds Homme singing about feeling unloved and wanting God to come and take him away as he lies in the hospital bed. He told Spin magazine why he felt the need to express himself in such a direct way without his usual sarcasm. "I feel like [Songs for the Deaf's] 'Go With The Flow' or [Lullabies to Paralyze's] 'Long Slow Goodbye' are very direct songs," he said. "But with those records, I could see the end goal before we started. This one started with no end in sight... it's just different this time for the band."

"[Matador founder] Chris Lombardi told me that this is Act Two of Queens of the Stone Age," he continued, "and I agree with that. Act Two just happened to start with me waking up in a hospital. I'm not complaining, but I do kind of wish it had started in a different way. I've always thought of music as separate from reality, but there's no escaping the reality of where this album started. I had no choice but to deal with it."

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