Brody Dalle testified in a Los Angeles courtroom Monday that Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme “terrified” her in late 2019 when he allegedly confessed to fantasizing about her murder and head-butted her so hard she “saw stars.”
Dalle, the founder of the Distillers, gave the emotional account on the first day of an expected 10-day trial involving the former spouses’ dueling domestic violence restraining orders filed against each other on Aug. 30.
“He head-butted me really hard. His forehead hit my head right here,” Dalle said, gesturing to her right temple. “I saw stars. I blacked out. My head went back, and I was on the ground. He bent down and he said, ‘You fucking faker.'”
She said Homme appeared to be intoxicated during the alleged assault just outside a sliding glass door of their former home on Nov. 27, 2019. She said he also gave a chilling confession before turning physical while his mother and the couple’s kids were inside the house.
“He said, ‘I’ve been thinking about wanting to kill you, and if I killed you, no one would know, because you’d be dead,'” Dalle testified. “I was in shock. I couldn’t believe that he would say something like that.”
The rock stars who married in December 2005 had been discussing possible separation in the weeks before the attack, she said. A month earlier, on Oct. 28, 2019, Homme’s alleged verbal abuse also escalated into something physical, she said.
“We were talking about touring, and he was thinking about putting a tour right when my record was coming out. I hadn’t released a record in a very, very long time, and I said, ‘I would never do that to you,’” she testified.
“I said, ‘It’s weird and competitive.’ And he said, ‘Competitive? You think you’re my competition? I want to fucking strangle you right now. And he came up to the bed and he got on top of me and screamed, ‘You’re a fucking insane bitch.’ And I had my arms up in a fetal position, and he grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of bed onto the floor,” Dalle testified Monday. “I was terrified.”
Dalle said she filed for a restraining order and initiated her divorce after the head-butting incident. She said Homme later attended rehab, and the couple seemed to have some success co-parenting after that until Homme allegedly turned violent again last June during a custodial handoff involving the couple’s two young sons, she testified.
According to Dalle, the QOTSA singer and guitarist punched her car window, wouldn’t let her close her driver’s side door, called her a “cunt” and said, “Hey Brody, fuck you forever.” She said Homme was upset because the couple’s teen daughter refused to go to his house. The daughter now has her own restraining order against Homme that also is part of the 10-day trial.
Homme sat quietly in the courtroom Monday, often taking notes. In his own restraining order against Dalle filed in August, he claimed she “angrily slammed her car door into my body, causing significant bruising.”
He further claimed Dalle punched him in the face on “several occasions” during their marriage and also threw objects at him, “such as her handbag and an iron.” He said she also called him “derogatory names such as “motherfucker,” “asshole,” and “piece of shit.”
The restraining order hearing will decide whether the emergency stay-away order should stand. It was postponed until this week because Homme previously sought criminal contempt charges against Dalle, 43, alleging she violated a court order by “failing” to turn over the couple’s three minor children for his custodial time.
After a bench trial that ended in November, a Los Angeles County judge found that Dalle was guilty of one count of “willfully” violating a court order by not delivering the couple’s 5-year-old son to Homme on Sept. 3.
In a series of other related rulings, he found that the couple’s 15-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son resisted visits with Homme of their own accord, citing Homme’s struggles with sobriety and his alleged threats against Dalle and her boyfriend.
Though jail time was possible, Dalle was sentenced to 60 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.
“I’m relieved by the court’s decision. I don’t believe anyone should go to jail or pick up trash for protecting her children,” she told Rolling Stone after the hearing. “As a mother, I will always put my children first and protect them at all costs.”
In a statement to the judge ahead of the sentence, Homme said he was “willing to take responsibility for things that I do,” but he wanted “justice” and “one set of rules for both sides.”
“I’ve suffered a lot of parental alienation in a short period of time,” Homme said. “This family is in grave danger and so fractured and ripped apart. All I want to do is see my kids. I want my mother to see her grandkids. I want my father to see his grandkids.”
