Music
Eagles of Death Metal open up about bassist's fight with cancer
by Michael Joffe
June 22, 2010
Recently AUX TV sat down with Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes AKA ‘Boots Electric’ during a stop in Toronto for an exclusive interview. The band was moments away from hitting the stage at this year’s NXNE festival, without bassist Brian O’Connor. O’Connor was at that moment in surgery in “a real fight for his life”, Jesse told AUX.
Earlier that day it was announced that Them Crooked Vultures would be putting on a benefit show in London for their friend, who is without medical insurance.
We asked Jesse how the band, who is well known as a close ‘family’, was doing without one of their members.
“Well…we’re never getting along without Brian. Brian is, he’s in a real fight for his life you know, with cancer. but it’s not like a situation where he’s… he’s walking around, he’s killin. He’s in surgery right now as we speak and, but he’s gonna be fine.”
The band not only received help from friends with the benifit concert, they were joined by another collaborator that night who filled in on bass.
Jesse explained, “Because we’re such a tight knit family and Eagles of Death Metal is more like the special forces of Rock and Roll, when there’s a position to be filled someone gets called and in this instance it’s Dean [Fertita] from Dead Weather and Queens of the Stone age. It’s a rough situation because Rock and Roll is always fun and it’s always easy to do but, it’s not easy when you have a man down. But like any good military unit, we’re gonna come and fu**ing kick ass, plant and American flag and take shit over.”
For more information on the fund for Brian, visit here.
