The U.S. rock band playing the Bataclan concert hall where 89 people were killed on the night of the November 13 Paris terror attack have praised the heroism of their fans in their first interview since the tragedy.
During an often-emotional conversation with Vice founder Shane Smith, members of Eagles of Death Metal recounted harrowing details of the attack and their eventual escape to safety. The musicians also shared some very personal insights into the way the attack has changed them, and vowed to continue to make music.
“I cannot wait to get back to Paris; I cannot wait to play,” said Jesse Hughes, the bands lead singer and co-founder.
Hughes was on stage on the night of the attacks. “I want to be the first band to play in the Bataclan when it opens back up because I was there when it went silent for a minute.”
“That’s when I saw the shooter”
Hughes and the other members of the band had been playing onstage for about an hour when three masked gunmen started shooting into the crowd with automatic weapons.
“At first I thought it was the PA cracking up and then I realized real quick that it wasn’t and I recognized what it was. At that time Jesse ran, he ran towards me, and we went in the corner of the stage,” guitarist Eden Galindo said.
Galindo said he, Hughes and a crew member called Boot managed to escape out the back exit of the venue together when the gunman paused to reload. They then went to look for Hughes’ partner, Tuesday Cross, in the dressing room, and when they couldn’t find her, Hughes opened to hallway door to look for her.
“That’s when I saw the shooter. And he turned on me, brought his gun down and the barrel hit the door frame and I was like oh, f***,” said Hughes, who was visibly distressed throughout the interview.
The most awful thing ever
Hughes warned the others and they all turned and fled. They made it to safety through an exit after finding Tuesday in the melee. The band’s drummer, Julian Dorio, used his drum kit as protection to crawl offstage and escaped through the same exit, close behind his bandmates.
“I think what really shocked me at first was that we’re a loud rock band, you know? The power of the band on the stage, through the PAs, is hard to trump and the initial shots were so powerful for me that, I immediately, I knew something was wrong,” he said.
“And I saw two guys out front, and that might just be the most awful thing ever, was them just relentlessly shooting into the audience.”
Bassist Matt McJunkins was on the other side of the stage when he saw “the pops go off,” and ended up trapped in a room with the band’s tour manager, Steve, and many of the band’s fans who were also trying to escape. One woman had a gunshot wound to the leg and was supported by her friends, who were trying to stem the bleeding.
With no way out and with nothing to defend themselves, McJunkins said they barricaded the doors with some chairs and picked up a bottle of champagne that was in the room to use as a potential weapon. To make matters worse, the roof started to leak, causing the room to start flooding, and people began to to worry that the cascading water would lead the gunmen to them.
“The gunfire got closer. It went on for, you know, ten, fifteen minutes, it just didn’t stop. And then it would stop and there was this sense of relief and then it would start up again.” he said. “And then there was an explosion that just shook the whole room, probably the whole building.”
They later found out that the blast was a gunman’s suicide vest.
Blood all over
Sound engineer Shawn London was at the back of the stage when the shooting began.
“I was still standing up and I can see the gunmen and he looked right at me and he shot at me and he missed and it hit my console,” he said.
“Everybody else around was injured there was blood all over. He stayed there and continued to shoot and shoot and to slaughter and just screamed, at the top of his lungs, ‘Allahu Ackbar’.”
He took refuge behind his console, along with a girl who had been shot in the torso, and tried to console her and keep her quiet to avoid being seen by the gunmen. He also managed to flee when the gunman stopped to reload his gun, taking the girl to safety with him.
Shared heroism
Smith spoke with Hughes and the other founder of the band, Joshua Homme, in a separate interview segment, and they said that the messages of support the band had received in the wake of the attacks had helped them feel united with their fans in grief.
“The one thing that all the guys in the band kept sharing was, it was like a shared heroism,” said Hommes. “That people came out of their homes to help. The fans that were in there, even when injured, were attempting to help each other and the band.”
While the grief and shock on the faces of the band is clear, equally apparent is their strength and their raw emotion, eloquently summed up by McJunkins.
“Music is what we do, it’s our lives, and there’s no way we’re not going to keep doing it,” he said, before starting to cry.
