“People were playing dead and they were scared”.
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In the interview with Vice, the band described the horror of being in the music venue on the night of the attacks.
Band co-founder Jesse Hughes told Vice he ran offstage after the gunfire erupted and went looking for his girlfriend in a dressing room.
Just as Dorio announced yesterday in his own online statement, Hughes hopes to return to Paris and specifically the Bataclan to perform for their fans again. “It went on for, you know, 10 [or] 15 minutes – it just didn’t stop”, McJunkins said. Our friends went there to see rock “n” roll and died.
Guitarist Eden Galindo said at first he thought the sound of gunfire was the PA system “cracking up”. The members of Eagles of Death Metal all survived, but the crew member working the group’s merchandise table, Nick Alexander, was killed.
In addition to the full band interview, Hughes and Homme sat down for a separate chat, and they reflected on the future of the band and their feelings about the fans who died. Hughes stated that Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon had donated royalties he had earned through the track to Parisian charities.
“People started dropping to the ground-injuries, death…. I really needed them to have gotten off stage because I didn’t see what happened to them when we got off”.
The band said they wanted to reach out to anyone who was there on the night, “anyone who is recovering from hospital, if they need a phone call from us”.
Bassist Matt McJunkins described fleeing into a room in the theater and taking cover with a group of other people, some of whom had been shot during the attack.
The band’s sound engineer, Shawn London, witnessed the attacks from his station at the front of the room, right next to the doors where the assailants entered the ballroom.
“I think he thought I probably got hit because I went down so quick and everyone else around was injured and there was blood all over…”
Later in the interview, QOTSA’s Josh Homme – who co-founded Eagles of Death Metal with Hughes but was not present on the night of the attack – joins the conversation, relating how he felt knowing his friends and bandmates were in danger.
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Speaking to Vice, singer Jesse Hughes said he “cannot wait to get back to Paris and play”. They tell Vice the tour will continue, and that they will get back to Paris sooner, rather than later.
