Now, Eagles of Death Metal have granted their first full interview following the attack. “We weren’t sure if they were targeting us”.
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“I want to go back and live”, said Hughes. “I knew something was wrong”, Dorio said.
The band’s drummer, Julian Dorio, said that the moment he laid his eyes upon the two gunmen as “the most awful” thing he had ever seen. “At first I thought it was the PA cracking up”, says guitarist Eden Galindo in the 26-minute video, “and then I realized real quick that it wasn’t”.
Members of the Palm Desert rock band caught up in the Paris terror attacks spoke out about their horrifying experience.
Jesse said: “People were playing dead, and they were so scared”. At the same time, a woman who had been shot in the thigh was bleeding, while friends tried to apply pressure to her wound.
In an interview produced by Vice, band members described to Vice’s Shane Smith how their Friday night show earlier this month became a scene of the worst violence in Paris since World War II.
“I was there when it went silent for a minute”, he said.
Frontman Jesse Hughes said just after the shooting began he was searching for his girlfriend when he came face to face with one of the shooters.
Bassist Matt McJunkins recalled how he was trapped in a room with concert goers as they continued to listen to the gunshots and the explosions caused by the jihadists’ suicide belts. I turned, looked through my drum hardware to the side of an amp, and that’s when the second round started.
Shawn London, the band’s sound engineer, was near the front doors, near where the gunmen burst in.
In a tearful tribute to those who died, band members Hughes and Josh Homme commended the heroism of the many people who chose to risk their lives and died trying to protect others.
Homme adds that the band plans on completing their European tour, saying, “We don’t really have a choice”. I just hope you understand Baby Duck that I love you very much.
All the bandmates made it out alive, except for their British merchandise manager Nick Alexander, who was among 89 people killed at Batalcan.
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And they also pledged to donate the royalties from covers of their music to the victims’ families, challenging music streaming services such as iTunes and Spotify to do the same.
