Eagles of Death Metal singer ‘cannot wait’ to play in Paris again

The lead singer of the Eagles of Death Metal, the band playing at the Bataclan concert hall during the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attack, said he wants to be the first gig to play at the venue when it reopens.

In the band’s first interview since the Nov. 13 massacre, singer Jesse Hughes told Vice that he “cannot wait to get back to Paris and play.”

{mosads}“I want to be the first person to play in the Bataclan when it opens up,” he said.

Hughes and other members of the band recalled the horror of the night and detailed how they were able to escape with their lives. All of the band members escaped unhurt.

Bassist Matt McJunkins said he was trapped in a room with concert attendees for several minutes waiting for the gunfire to stop.

“The gunfire got closer. It went on for, you know, 10 [or] 15 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,” McJunkins said. “And then there was an explosion, and that just shook the whole room, probably the whole building, and of course we didn’t know what that was, so we didn’t know if someone was trying to bomb the place or maybe blow up the whole venue.”

Guitarist Eden Galindo said he did not initially realize what was going on when the first gunshots went off.

“At first, I thought it was the PA cracking up, and then I realized pretty quick that it wasn’t,” he said. “And I recognized what it was.”

While he was hiding behind his drum kit waiitng for a moment to break for the exit, drummer Julian Dorio said he saw the attackers firing into the crowd.

“I turned, looked, sort of through my drum hardware, to the side of an amp, and that’s when the second round started,” he said. “And I saw two guys out front, and that might just be the most awful thing ever, them just relentlessly shooting into the audience.”

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.

“[The attackers] came in the door, instantly walked in and just started blasting,” he said. “There were two of them, and instantly people started dropping to the ground. Injuries, death.”

London said one of the terrorists shot at him, but missed.

“I think he thought I probably got hit… He stayed there and continued to shoot, and shoot, and slaughter, and just scream at the top of his lungs, ‘Allah akbar.’ And that’s when I instantly knew what was going on,” he said.

Hughes likewise came face to face with one of the killers. “I opened up the hallway door and that’s when I saw the shooter, and he turned on me, brought his gun down and the barrel hit the door frame.” 

Later in the interview, Hughes began to cry, saying he felt guilty for running off the stage before he could see if the rest of the band was OK.

“I felt so guilty in a way that like, I had left Matt on stage and maybe Davie, too, and I didn’t want anything to have happened to them,” he said.

At least 89 people were killed at the Bataclan, and at least 130 were killed throughout the city in the attack carried out by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).