Gettin’ Off with Eagles of Death Metal

By Team JamBase Nov 20, 2008 5:20 pm PST

By: Dennis Cook

Eagles of Death Metal by Kii Arens
The Eagles of Death Metal are back to revive handclaps, sleazy guitars, tambourines, girl backup singers and other gooey good stuff missing from most rock ‘n’ roll today. Their third long player, Heart On (released October 28 on Downtown Records), is their most focused outing to date with a swinging group feel from childhood friends Jesse “Boots Electric” Hughes (lead vocals, guitar, other shit) and Josh “Baby Duck” Homme (drums, guitars, keys, other shit). Miles away from the gnarled, razor teeth and incisive mood of Homme’s Queens of the Stone Age, EODM relentlessly remind us of the original meaning of rockin’ ‘n’ rollin’ in tunes worthy of peak era Sweet and Cheap Trick, except these dream police are inside of your pants.

“This album’s a big deal for us because it’s the first album where I’ve truly felt able to give to the record and the Eagles the way Josh does. I was trying to write songs this time and it’s different when you try,” says Hughes. “That focus is a wonderful thing. At its heart, Eagles is about two best friends having the shits-n-giggles best time of their life, but it’s also a superstar bringing his friend to a place where he always belonged AND making sure he feels this way. This album is the first full realization of that fact. It took a year and a half to record all over the world, including dragging our asses through the Heartland of America, which was amazing. Fargo, North Dakota and Boise, Idaho are WILD FUCKING PLACES to be recording, dude!”

“I admit to my own clichés. I always say, ‘This ain’t no Bible study.’ I ain’t here to save the whales or to get Ticketmaster to lower their prices. I’m here to have a good time,” enthuses Hughes. “It was in the Heartland where we got [the title] Heart On. It’s more like a ‘bro-ner’ [than a boner] for a good friend. Nah, I kid! When you’re in the big cities like we are you get spoiled to what you have. You have the best of the best constantly running through in every part of the arts. So honestly, it’s difficult to become impressed. But 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.”

The ’80s style heavy metal cover, highly reminiscent of W.A.S.P.’s single sleeve for “Animal (Fuck Like A Beast),” is blatant misdirection from guys who delight in confounding expectations.

Eagles of Death Metal by Kelli Hayden
“[Heavy metal] is one of the main things we aren’t. We keep going into worlds where we don’t belong,” says Homme. “From the outset, there was the sense we need to touch every scene with some part of our body in some sick Twister game of rock ‘n’ roll. We make sure we’ve invited each scene to join us because it is like we’re trying to unite the clans here. The [Heart On cover] totally has that Sunset Strip, Hollywood & Vine quality to it. And so does Eagles somehow. That’s where one of our mantras – ‘There’s a way to do all things’ – comes into play. Nobody owns nothing, and the heavy metalers don’t own Sunset Strip and I’ll show you why!”

“It’s pretty easy to take stock of what’s out there and NOT do that,” succinctly observes Homme. “It’s kind of gotten to the point where we were before Nirvana again, where [rock] music kinda sucked. There’s stuff out there but now that there’s no record stores or places to hang out it’s harder to get turned onto something. You look around and everyone’s on their computer, which isn’t necessarily bad, but I think Axl Rose said it best when he said, ‘Where do we go now?’ I never think of Guns N’ Roses but it seemed right for this analogy. Hey, Plato could have been a total asshole, too, you never know.”

“Music is a pleasure device or a way to explain things that are difficult to put into words. Too often, much like comedy where no one gets an Academy Award, it’s much easier to fake cry than to make people laugh. I think the same goes for music based in pleasure,” notes Homme. “I think to even review an Eagles of Death Metal record may be fundamentally taking it too far. Eagles is supposed to do something to you or it’s not successful. In this new model we’re sort of figuring it out together, everyone’s got this moment to step forward and take center stage, regardless of what they’re communicating about. And this isn’t because Eagles gets bad reviews or anything – to be honest, the Eagles get great reviews – but I find it interesting when publications act the way the Whisky A Go Go acts, where it actually thinks it’s cooler than the bands that play there. There’s such a symbiotic situation there that the WHOLE situation is supposed to be cool.”

Let’s Go To The Hop

Rock has lost its hips in many ways. It doesn’t dance much and seems dead from the waist down. Turn on the radio or watch videos and there’s little to be frightened of or truly stimulated by – titillation replacing actual carnal engagement and dance routines that focus on the individual rather than partnering up with someone. There’s little of the danger or unpasteurized sex Little Richard or Elvis Presley rubbed in our faces in the 1950s. However, Eagles of Death Metal do their part to get a lil’ musk up our nostrils as often as they can get away with it.

“All I came here to do is shake my dick and have a good time. I don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but the way I look at it is rock ‘n’ roll forgot about the ladies. Even Little Richard never forgot about ladies! It’s got nothing to do with being gay or straight. It’s about understanding the ultimate romantic, sexual thing that is man & woman. Rock & roll, yin & yang,” says Hughes. “So, when it’s a bunch of dudes that are upset and pumping their fists in a boy party where your Biscuit is Limp, well, fuck, man, why would you ever want the word ‘limp’ associated with ANYTHING you got going in rock ‘n’ roll?”

Continue reading for more on EODM…

 
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
There’s great, surging power to tapping into the spirit of unrepentant ass hounds like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry that also made invigorating, culture-shaking music.

“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.”

Continue reading for more on EODM…

 
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.

Josh Homme

 

“It’s un-ironic. He’s not trying to Williamsburg his face, and if it was gone you’d say, ‘Would you grow one immediately or wear this one I bought at the store across the street?’ His moustache is in the Tom Selleck/Burt Reynolds tradition,” says Homme. “It’s sweepin’ up the nation. We call it a ‘tickly town tamer.’ He’s a bit like Sampson in that it is the source of all his power. Nicknames and phrases like that are a product of growing up in the TV generation and not feeling their slogans were doing anything for us. We have so much fun with [song] titles and the concept that we’re ‘selling’ our music. So, let’s sell the shit out of it and enjoy it and not trip.”

As noted at the start, there’s a fuller band feel on Heart On.

Jesse Hughes by Ronan Thenadey
“That’s beautiful deception on our part because this record is once again primarily me and Jess because that’s where the weird quirks come from. We love to make music together, to get locked in that bizarre cave that happens with us when we go into the studio. I enjoy making three-record plans; it’s a lot of fun. They’re not cast in stone necessarily but a big outline of what we’d like to do,” says Homme. “[Heart On] is really the record I’ve been looking forward to doing because it’s the most polished in terms of production but still raw and goes the deepest. How deep into the center of fun can you go while submerging yourself? The important thing is to grow, and the difference between the first and second records, musically, is not tons; it’s more how it’s presented. When we did the first record we laughed when we said, ‘When we put bass on the second record it’ll already make it so different it’s crazy!’ What’s fun to do is be consistent but surprise your audience at the same time. That’s the real challenge.”

“This is the first time in Eagles that I’ve shown a side of sadness, like ‘Now I’m A Fool,’ and it hurts. That’s me observing romance and Hollywood,” says Hughes, who also works up a melancholy shine on the Stealers Wheel-like “How Can A Man With So Many Friends Feel So Alone,” a Heart On standout. “That one’s an ironic truth. Here you are, exactly where you wanted to be, and everyone knows you but nobody cares. If you don’t take [the music industry] seriously for what it is it will fuck you.”

That said, success is chasing them around like a barely legal cutie with a cherry to pop. Eagles were recently inducted into the Denny’s restaurant chain’s “All Nighter” hall of fame and given their own menu item, “Heart On A Plate Pancakes.”

Eagles of Death Metal
“Having a menu item at Denny’s makes me feel like I’ve made it. If people don’t think that’s cool then they probably wouldn’t think it was cool if Jessica Simpson walked down their street. Jessica Simpson showed up at our soundcheck today,” says Hughes with a hint of schoolboy naughtiness. So, did Ms. Daisy Dukes shake it a little? “No but I wanted her to! I was kind of taken by surprise by the Denny’s thing, which I did at the Denny’s at Highland & Sunset [in Hollywood]. When I got there they had the whole place shut down for me! Get the fuck out! I respect and appreciate it when people honor me and I try hard to never feel entitled to shit. No one is ‘lucky’ to get to talk to me! I’m never going to think that. I never take shit for granted. It all seems like an award to me.”

It’s a wonder that anyone with a pulse and a healthy amount of pheromones would reject the Eagles of Death Metal. Their roaming hands hug of rock’s original inspirations is freakin’ enjoyable, undiluted fun that just might let you scrape some denim off your Levis with a perfect (for the night) stranger. If you’re lucky and stop worrying about what anybody thinks of your stupid, broken wing chicken moves on the dance floor. Real freedom is always sexy. Believe that.

“I don’t break the rules just to be wrong or just to break ’em. I don’t need to believe in magic talking monkeys just to get down with somebody’s wife. I really do believe I was made for this” says Hughes. “I love all the parts of it, especially when you do it right. There’ve been moments when I’ve seen a collective look on the faces in the crowd when the moment hits them and they realize, ‘I could do some stupid shit and it’ll be fun and nobody will care!’ Yes! Dude, you don’t have to be born in 1965 and have gone to the first Clash show to wear their t-shirt. If you just discovered rad shit yesterday instead of 30 years ago then it’s still to be congratulated. It doesn’t matter when you discover rad shit, only that you do. If you wanna get down and dance come see the Eagles of Death Metal.”

“What’s important is now. We’re young and there’s got to be a way to cut loose in rock ‘n’ roll. I can’t believe that isn’t at the forefront of what rock ‘n’ roll is anymore. It seems utterly bizarre, very Twilight Zone, that the main goal isn’t having everyone doing whatever it takes to get their pants off with one another,” says Homme. “In people’s reactions to Eagles of Death Metal now we see a lot of sighs of relief. We knew at first people would think it was a joke and a side project so we chose not to address that at all. That will happen and spending our time defending or correcting things is a waste. This is a course we’re teaching and we’re trying to have fun. Ultimately, the joke is on them because we’re badass and we can throw down. I love that surprise factor. And some people think we’re not badass but I don’t care about them. Fuck it. I want people to put their fist in the air and dance. Get off with your heart on.”

Here’s Jesse Hughes cookin’ it up at Denny’s


And here’s the goofy, cool video for new single “Wannabe In L.A.”

Eagles of Death Metal are on tour now. Get your rocks off here.

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