Maybe it’s a testament to the inquisitiveness of the average rock fan that Kyuss, a desert rock band, would be more famous now than it was back when it was active. Sure, “Green Machine” is one of the greatest alternative rock songs of the 1990s and launched thousands of copycat bands. However, the real impact of the band is best appreciated nowadays.
Just what was that green machine that Josh Homme’s old band was raving about? And why couldn’t Kyuss make it last? Here’s what I’m going to try to reveal today.
Kyuss’s Road to Making “Green Machine”
The new thing was just around the corner. It just had to be. Back in the early 1990s, music trends followed each other at a maddeningly quick pace. Grunge came out of a small scene in Seattle and came to dominate the world. Next, Californian pop-punk, Los Angeles industrial metal and nu-metal were the flavours du jour.
However, if you were a record exec in 1992, you’d beg your bosses to put everything they had on Kyuss, a band that’d built its chops and following by playing shows in the desert using heavy-duty power chargers.
It was the right time for the band featuring Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri, Brant Bjork and singer John Garcia. But it had taken forever to get to this point. The band had been formed in the late 1980s and, originally, had few opportunities to showcase its talents out in Palm Desert, California. “Wretch,” the debut record, fails to capture the band’s live magic.
However, 1992’s “Blues for the Red Sun” made stoner rock veritably cool. Do I think that the ingredients were unique? Well, the band played Black Sabbath/Blue Cheer distorted and detuned riffs with gusto and punk attitude. They were the sons of “Sweet Leaf.” Bands like Sleep and Fu Manchu were already around. And, doom rock groups like Pentagram and Saint Vitus had already laid down the groundwork.
But was Kyuss the best of the bunch? They were certainly marvellously exciting, a Nirvana-like metal rod for attention for the whole community of bands.
The Meaning of the Lyrics of “Green Machine”
Is it about weed? Well, actually, I don’t so. “Green Machine” is actually one of the few stoner rock songs not about weed, despite naming the colour that most thrills fans of the genre.
Nah, instead it is about greed, and a corporate system that the group would now get to know thanks to their newfound quasi-success.
The lyrics, quite cleverly, I think, detail the never-ending needs of the modern man, and the internal conflicts they create. Bjork, the songwriter here, suggests that destroying those expectations might well be the first step toward liberation.
And, while many alternative-rock and grunge bands of the time had similar anti-capitalistic messages, most of those groups were signed to Sony and Geffen. Kyuss, as you’ll see, has walked the walk.
Music Video for “Green Machine”
The music video wasn’t a mainstay of MTV. However, I think it’s certainly helped create the myth of Kyuss. Filmed out in the menacing desert, under clouds of dust, the video for “Green Machine” is one of the iconic depictions of early 1990s American metal. Note that the video features Scott Reeder playing bass, as Oliveri had quit the group by this stage.
The Legacy of Kyuss and of “Green Machine”
Yes, critics sure did love “Blues for the Red Sun.” Metal fans championed it. And, record executives were prepared to line their pockets with this “New Alice in Chains.”
The band kept working, toured relentlessly supporting bands like Metallica, Danzig and White Zombie and released the equally highly acclaimed “Welcome to Sky Valley.” By the 1990s, stoner rock bands like Monster Magnet were scoring bona fide chart hits.
But it didn’t quite work that way for Kyuss, despite the influence in the stoner metal scene. Inner conflict made the group call it a day by 2000.
Not long afterwards, Josh Homme, now reunited with Oliveri, rode the goodwill for Kyuss to platinum success with his new group, Queens of the Stone Age.
But record sales and hit singles, or lack thereof, don’t tell the whole story. Kyuss is one of the most influential bands of the 1990s, and “Green Machine” is one of the greatest alternative songs of the decade.
