Interview - Eagles of Death Metal - Part 1

In this first part of a two part interview Andrew Tijs speaks with Eagles of Death Metal main main Jessue Hughs about being a fat, married redneck, slimming with drugs and being a ginger.

New album Heart On is a bit slower, it's a bit more ruminative than I expected…

It's the theory of relativity, my friend. We were going so fast we seem to stand still. I bought a time machine. The first albums were really fast because safe thing when you suck terribly. I'd only been playing guitar for three months before the first record so I was low on skills and high on unabashed thievery. There's nothing new under the sun. The first album was buttfucking the Rolling Stones with a gross lack of talent. The second album was buttfucking the Rolling Stones with a little understanding of Bachman Turner Overdrive. And now I'm getting the sophisticated and demonstrating what I know: buttfucking the Rolling Stones with Devo.

You started out as an amateur but is there a danger of getting too good at guitar?

Amateur almost suggests that I wanted to be here in the first place. I pulled the sword from the stone. Joshua [Homme] drove me to Hollywood in my mother's car, after coming to check on me and breaking into my home he heard 'I Only Want You' and he said 'Write some more and you'll make it'. I was going through an ugly divorce and was desperate to leave.

Yeah, you were a fat, married redneck. What advice can you give fat, married rednecks to become a rock god?

You have to direct your whole life towards something conservative, like journalism like me. You have to marry a woman who, it turns out, her mother was raped by Satan. You have to go through a living hell and feel like you have nothing left to lose. I wrote music because I felt very unattractive and unwanted by everyone in the world.

How did you lose all the weight? Just getting on the junk?

You mean drugs? I was a speed freak, my friend. Biker's script.

I was speaking to [Melbourne band] Dukes Of Windsor and they told me you appeared on their album.

That was rad! That was awesome, man. I was checking out the video because I'm intended to record a solo album in Australia. They invited me to sing on the record and it was cool. No one's every asked me to do that before.

I spoke to Jack and he gave me the impression that you were having "too much fun", like heading towards rehab.

Oh yeah, I've been to rehab, absolutely dude. I bought into the whole rehab thing and I realised that I'd just spent $50,000 on a month-long cappacino resort. Okay, interesting. I found out how full of shit people can be, for real. I don't ever want to be that guy. I was brand new babe in rock and roll. I'd never been here before. I'm supposed to get high and take drugs. I'm not sorry about that. But it's like every habit, it's hard to break, like getting up early in the morning for the first time. If you can't pay the bills or feed your children for the sake of drugs, you're an asshole, you're a deadbeat, not a drug addict. That's what I learned. Also, a bunch of really rich people whine, a lot, about how hard it was to stop partying.
 
I didn't really want this to turn into an intervention.

[Laughs] Dude! That would be so rad, a transcontinental intervention. We're intervening right now, I'm sending a ute to pick you up.

We'll get a conference call with all the international journalists.

Yeah! And you can all tell me what a pussy I am for whining about how hard it was to get everything I ever wanted and party too much.

Well, you said you were nervous about Heart On because this is the first time anyone has expectations of you.

Well, I never tried music from the get go. I always respected that people might be listening to it, however few. On the first record I respected the fact that they only reason people gave a shit is because my best friend was famous and a badass in one of the greatest rock n' roll bands ever. I didn't ever want to make my friend sorry for binding his reputation to me. I also didn't know shit, so it was what it was. Here it is, I'm swinging my dick, it is what it is. On this album I love what I'm doing and I'm into the art of it, recording, engineering. When you're doing that it always feels like you've got something to lose. Like, if you're trying to do something deliberately, you can deliberately miss. Anytime I'm going to do anything that remotely demonstrates that a girl can hurt my feelings, or that I'm sad, I hate that shit. Eagles Of Death Metal about the joy of dick-swinging, like 'Nothing Sucks'. If you're in a band it's like saying 'Follow me' and if you're going to ask that you gotta take them somewhere.

 I take offense that people call you a joke band. Hell, I've actually cried to 'Already Died', it's got a lot of pathos.

I think so too. That was one Josh insisted me putting on the record. That song was hard because it was about my divorce. I appreciate you saying that so much, man. Thank you very much for saying that, you're the first person who has ever said that.

It was about your divorce but it was also about my break-up.

That's the trick. I'm not the first person who has had their feelings hurt. If you declare it without the pomposity of pretending you're the only one, you have a better chance of understanding the situation. If I want someone to understand me or feel empathy for me, I don't want to stand behind a velvet rope and say 'No one can possibly understand something as amazing as me', y'know?

Most rock bands seem to use love as a euphemism for lust, but you seem more sincere than that.

There's a difference between lust and love and sex and making love. I don't need the rules to be wrong to break them. I have a wonderful mother and I'm not going to pretend  or use my art or charm to put the wrong message across. That's almost selling out.

Read Part Two.