Gettin' Off with Eagles of Death Metal

When you're in the Midwest you'll be at a mall where you're followed by a chain of girls whose eyes say, 'Take me away from here,' with a good natured, almost corny enthusiasm. I regret ever making fun of corny chicks. Losing your ability to be corny and romantic fucks you up as a person. The Heartland of America reminded me of this fact. Thus, that what's in Heart On - a return to true romanticism and secretly sleazy fuckin' interludes. -Jesse Hughes

"After years of doing this it's not a question of 'Is this good or not?' but more of 'Do I like this or not?' It ends or begins right there. The only thing I know for sure is I don't know everything. So, I barely know what I like [laughs]. That's what makes finding new things you like such a great discovery," says Homme of Eagles' pleasure driven music, which sticks its tongue out and waggles like rock's earliest forebears. "It's hard for people to put those people in time perspective, especially kids. They don't realize when Elvis was playing early on it literally scared the shit out of people. And they were like, 'Well, too bad for you,' with no signs of slowing up. It's led us all the way here. That music is so great and feels old-timey to a lot of people but the blues can be modernized. Not necessarily by Robert Cray, for me, but Billy Gibbons [ZZ Top] is certainly a great purveyor of that Howlin' Wolf style of blues with songs and hooks, not just the 12-bar blues. I don't have the time to genre-fy and classify everything. I listen to stuff that gives me the same juice in my belly that playing the right songs does for me. When you walk away from a first date and close the gate and leave with those butterflies, that's the closest thing I know to the feeling of 'Oh my god, we're standing on top of a good song! Check your shoes, we just stepped in hit!"

Eagles of Death Metal

"A dirty, motherfuckin', perverted dog is what [Chuck] is! When I got into rock 'n' roll it was a fairytale life. I got an opportunity to look at some heroes and decide what my philosophy was going to be, like almost clinically in a scientific way," offers Hughes. "I decided that in order to never feel like I'd betrayed myself that I couldn't bullshit what I was doing. I'm never going to pretend it's only about the art. It's about the pussy, too, and I ain't afraid to say it. I think all the warnings we got from the square, stuffy members of our families and TV really stuck. I think people are too smart and too self-conscious and too cool for school. When everyone is cool and everyone's an outlaw then everyone's nothing. You forget how to have fun. When you go straight for the pussy and don't really fool around and kiss you lose the art of gettin' down and you're just fucking. There's a great difference between being a great lover and being a dude who gets laid a lot."

"Speaking for myself as someone who's put out too many records now, I really feel like consistency is king. It's the thing I hold onto the closest," says Homme. "If you're lucky enough to be standing in a situation around a bunch of people good music can come from, then you just keep pumping that handle until it's dead. Someday you won't be here so you might as well be here right now. I think the Eagles of Death Metal are a very now-est celebration, a brand of music that brings in the greatest live audience I've ever played in front of. You could have a train wreck of a song and everyone will be, 'It's alright, start again! Don't worry about it.' And it's primarily girls. From the Queens to the Eagles, it's always been about the groove. When you're a teenager you have undirected angst and you don't even know why, probably just because you're growing. I can remember that vividly but by the time I was 20 that was gone and I slicked my hair back and tried to figure out how to strut in a way chicks find incredibly irresistible. Whether I got there or not means nothing. It was that attempt to reach across and say, 'Ladies, I dig you. Let's figure out a way to make it so,' that matters."

This is a band fully aware of being part of a tradition. While rhapsodizing about the paragons of Detroit City rock (Nugent, Stooges, Seger), Hughes tosses in Suzi Quatro. It's a telling, charming reveal of EODM's soft spot for glittery, tough baby girls and their lollipop rawkin'. For such a seeming boys club, Eagles ooze Joan Jett, Quatro and the "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger" side of Patti S.

"Suzi is the queen, motherfucker! She's one of the formulas I draw from for my songs. I love her, man. I'm a Joan Jett fanatic, too. If you look at the way I dressed on the first album, that's my homage to Joan Jett. That's directly taken from her 1977 bandana-bracelet look, pro Keds and all, right down to the tee," says Hughes. "We did a tour with Joan, and I mean this with complete fuckin' sincerity, she became my hero. She is one of the great rock 'n' rollers we'll ever see that's still connected to the roots. She's the real deal and her show fuckin' rocks. And she's still hot! I love that woman. She was wonderful to me and took me under her wing. She gave me hardass advice."

Pancakes, Staches and Pantslessness

It can be argued that Jesse Hughes has the greatest moustache in rock today, and that follicular signature may be the only constant in the Eagles.

"I learned a lesson watching Tom Selleck make the biggest debacle of his life! He shaved his moustache and lost his entire female following and ended up kissing Kevin Kline in In & Out," observes Hughes. "I understand the power and fury of looking exactly like their fathers did to teenage girls between 11-15, their formative years [laughs]. It's the sort of secret weapon that confounds the female sex altogether because women have Oprah-ed themselves – once they've identified their problem it perpetuates it to eternity. Sometimes people go to a psychiatrist who tells them the reason they're so aggressive is because their dad was mean to them when they were nine, but it still doesn't stop their bad behavior."

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