Maybe Josh Should Have Stayed Homme
• Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme was trending over the weekend, and not in that good way — Homme was captured on video kicking a female photographer’s camera into her face on Saturday night during the first night of KROQ‘s Almost Acoustic Christmas show. In a lengthy piece published in Variety, Chelsea Lauren, a photographer for Shutterstock says the incident was unprovoked and that Homme was even smiling before he struck her. In the video, Homme can be seen walking past Lauren, and then backtracking a step to kick away her camera. This photo was taken by Lauren seconds before the incident.
“I saw him coming over and I was shooting away,” Lauren recounted. “The next thing I know his foot connects with my camera and my camera connects with my face, really hard. He looked straight at me, swung his leg back pretty hard and full-blown kicked me in the face. He continued performing, I was startled, I kind of stopped looking at him, and I just got down and was holding my face because it hurt so badly.” Word of the incident spread quickly — back in the press room, Variety says a rep for KROQ received a text from an audience member asking, “Did the guitarist for Queens Of The Stone Age kick a photographer in the face?”
And then things got weirder — minutes after the incident, Lauren said Homme took out what appeared to be a knife and deliberately cut his own forehead, dripping blood for the rest of the performance. The Variety piece said, “It’s unknown if the 44-year-old Homme was under the influence of alcohol or drugs on Saturday. At one point, he called the audience ‘retards’ before insulting the night’s headlining act, Muse. ‘F — Muse!’ he exclaimed. Homme also encouraged the crowd to boo him, and told everyone to take their pants off, saying, ‘I want to give you all a night you’ll never remember.'” Lauren was later treated at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Yesterday, Homme released a statement that read, “Last night, while in a state of being lost in performance, I kicked over various lighting and equipment on our stage. Today it was brought to my attention that this included a camera held by photographer Chelsea Lauren. I did not mean for that to happen and I am very sorry. I would never intentionally cause harm to anyone working at or attending one of our shows and I hope Chelsea will accept my sincere apology.” Lauren said she was planning to file a police report. [Photo from Chelsea Lauren’s Instagram page]
