Eagles Of Death Metal (Part One)
Upon entering Jesse Hughes’ hotel room at the K West hotel in Shepherd’s Bush, the Eagles Of Death Metal frontman is reclining on the bed for a photo-shoot. He is wearing nothing but a pair of leather motorcycle boots, aviator sunglasses, and some bright orange y-fronts, which are obscured from the point of view of the camera by a strategically placed black and gold guitar. He bids hello, rolls around on the bed at the photographer’s behest a few times, and then springs up to greet us in his own irrepressible manner.
“So do you know the song “‘Long Slow Goodbye’ by the Queens Of The Stone Age?” is the first thing he says, heading over to the iPod on the windowsill. “Well this is my version that I recorded in Berlin using just a laptop and a guitar.”
A few more – fully clothed – shots later and the photographer leaves. Jesse embraces him and tells him he loves him. The guy looks really pleased, but his high-pitched middle-class English voice sounds faintly ridiculous next to Hughes’s bullishly-broad Texan tones. The man doesn’t just own a personality, it’s more like he was built back to front, with the personality made first and some arms and legs stuck on afterwards.
Left alone, we sit down and I tell him that I would like to ask him about his knife collection. Concerned by the fact that we are discussing issues that are very sensitive in the UK – and spurred on by a desire to portray Jesse in his own words, not least because he was a fascinating orator and a perfect gentleman – I have transcribed our conversation (well, I didn’t do much talking…) below. It should give a good idea of just how engaging, intelligent and warm he is…
JH: How did you know I had a knife collection?
[Your PR] told me because there’s a piece that we do in the mag every month where musicians are talking about something that’s important to them…
JH: That’s cool. I have a knife and a firearm collection. Take your pick, baby.
OK, well, how did you get started collecting that stuff?
I started as a boy scout. I’m a great believer in the boy scouts. I would go away, and all boy scouts have a little pocket knife, and boys often tend to carry pocket knives, but I never really understood their function. There’s something beautiful about a utilitarian knife. A knife can be a symbol of something, it can be like your sword, your symbol of your power, your self-authority or whatever. Beyond that they just look fucking cool. So, having the utilitarian need for a knife, I always carry one – unless of course I’m in England.
Well you have one on (pointing to his necklace, which has a two inch blade hanging from it). It’s very small.
But none-the-less lethal.
It’s cool though.
I mean, people can hijack planes with box cutters, you know what I mean? But a knife is a useful tool and it’s also a symbol of something. A symbol of ‘Don’t fight me, I might sting’. But I have an avid and intense knife collection. I have over 30 Nazi-era Officers’ daggers. I collect a lot of Frontier-era Bolo knifes and then I have a lot from the 20s and the 1900s, 1910s to the 1950s – standard American pocket knives. Because they would vary and they would either have a big blade or a little blade and I never knew what that was for until I found out that they were used as fishing knives. One is used to address the fish and one is used to scale. I probably have over 400 knives.
Right. And where do you keep them? Are they on display?
In the hearts of my friends! Some of them are on display. Like I have a couple of interesting German daggers. When the allies came into Germany, they seized control of the steelworks, the knife factories, and decided to make some money out of it, so they didn’t stop production, they simply put a ‘Made In Germany’ stamp on the inside of the hilt. So, a German dagger, in English, saying ‘Made In Germany’ is pretty interesting and rare. I have the bayonet, still blood-rusted, that my grandfather used to fight his way out of a foxhole with a German who had been blasted. Concussion knocked this German soldier into my grandfather’s foxhole. It was a shock and a fight to the death ensued. And my grandfather, he won out, and he put the knife, still kind of in shock, in the sheath and it wouldn’t come out the next day, so he just put it in his luggage and collected a new bayonet – I’m sure there were a lot lying around on the ground, you know what I mean? – brought it home. Many years later when I was nine years old, he had, like all grandfathers in the south, he had the fucking trunk upstairs y’know? And I went through it and I found a couple of weird things. I found a bizarre SS handgun that was chambered with a bullet no-one makes, which is something that the Germans would do that would confound any sort of ballistics of any sort – so that was for their secret executions – and I found this bayonet. It wouldn’t dislodge, and being the kid that I was, I was bound and determined to pull it out. So when I got it out, it had weird rust in it and everything, and I asked my grandfather about it and I remember… It fucked him up when he saw it, because I don’t think he’d looked at it since he came home. And, even if you’re righteous, even in the pit of self-defence when you’re fighting for your life, when you’re ultimately a good person, really, you don’t want to take it. And I’m sure that it was more traumatic than my grandfather ever wanted to talk about. And when I saw the look on his face, that became a big symbol for me. So I put it up on my wall, not to remind me that we kicked the German’s ass, which we did – and thankfully so, but as a reminder that weapons are horrible things even when they are necessary and the right of men to keep. It’s not anything pleasant and pretty. It’s always gonna be covered in blood. As artists, we often get into weighty symbols, you know what I mean? And I’m gonna use that to stop global warming…
Eagles Of Death Metal – ‘Wanna Be In LA’
Even though, like you say, they are horrible things, weapons, how do you…
You know, we never would have had an arms race if the Russians hadn’t gotten a hold of the bomb from the Rosenbergs. If you wish for peace, prepare for war. That’s Pax Romana. When that is applied without morality or a sense of conscience, then you have something totalitarian, but I know for a fact that when I got picked on every day and had my lunch money taken, it didn’t stop until I fought for myself. I will tell you right now, I got my ass kicked the first time I stood up for myself, but the bully thought about it twice the next time, because he’d still have to work for it. So, knives to me are a symbol of many things. They’re a symbol of things that you thrust into our backs, they’re a symbol of things that get thrust into our hearts as the smiling face of the plunger kisses us on the cheek, you know what I mean? And a knife is a symbol of your independence, and so that’s why I always give them as gifts. On my friends birthdays I give them a new knife. “Here’s a new boot knife for ya, stay free.” Just a symbol.
Cool.
And it looks tough.
(Again pointing at the small blade on a chain round his neck) I’m interested in your necklace, where did you get it from?
I got this from an amazing company that I recommend you check out. They’ve got meat cleavers, some really cool shit, chainsaws. It’s called Spraggwerks. It’s out of Hollywood. Fucking amazing shit. But my favourite piece that he has, cos these are all weapons, but his best weapon is an old-fashioned RCA Victor microphone. It’s made out of silver. I like that because this is a guy that is a friend of mine, he’s not against weapons but he understands that the best weapon is, like, my guitar right there – it kills Communists.
(Photographer re-enters the room to take away the rest of his gear, Jesse has a brief word with him and starts entertaining us both)
I have a variety of guns. I just bought two 1844 Naval revolvers. Black powder sidearms. They were used during the civil war, like Doc Holliday would use. I loaded my first hot-shot. Pretty amazing. Double powder. BAM! Makes a loud shot and spits black powder all in your face.
Where do you go shooting?
I live in a unique place. I step outside my house, walk across the street and blast away at anything I want. I could even shoot a group of land management officers because I’m in an uncorporated land and they have no jurisdiction.
No way!
Absolutely.
Could you kill someone on your land?
If they were in the midst of committing a crime and directly threatening me, um, yes. I would still get arrested for manslaughter and released. Now, if my wife did it, she would be not arrested because women have a lower threshold of imminent danger. They have a legal right to feel imminently threatened in their lives greater than men. California’s fucked up because it’s so wacky liberal that if a burglar’s got a .38 pointed at my head and I pull out my .357 magnum, I may be charged for taking an ‘unequal calibre advantage’. But here’s how I look at it; if you pull a toothpick on me, I’m going to get the biggest fucking club I can find, because I don’t wanna play fair, this ain’t no Marquess of Queensbury rules, I wanna fucking win dude. That’s why I cheat at tests.
Next, Jesse fights an intruder at his home: “at this moment, I understand blood lust” he says…
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