Would you like to be party to a somewhat odd, definitely wide-ranging conversation covering time travel, Skittles, Burt Reynolds, Chinese Democracy and wanting to murder Karl Marx? So glad we can help you with that. “This is the greatest job in the world, and you have an obligation to do the best you can do.” Ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of leading The Eagles of Death Metal to these very antipodes, let us introduce to you, Jesse Boots Electric Hughes!
JH: How you doing girl, what’s up? I’m just on the outskirts of Coachella, I live here. But we’re headin’ to your neck of the woods!
FL: We’re excited. Tell us what’s been the highlight of the Heart On tour so far?
Joey Castille from Queens of the Stone Age is on drums in this band, and he’s breaking our asses. He’s one of the finest musicians I’ve ever had the honour of playing with, and he’s turning the band into a whole new animal. And that has been the highlight of things so far. – śCause being in a band that doesn’t suck in any way, means I’m not allowed to suck in this particular incarnation.
Have things been kicked up a notch off the back of this record?
Well, that was the whole goal, you know what I mean? We started out with Peace, Love and Death Metal and Death by Sexy and with the production on those records, Josh (Homme) just stopped me from sucking too hard. This album we wanted to actually show we could do some stuff. And we love Jimmy Page, so we just decided to go to like, rock fantasy camp and live the dream. And the dream is pretty cool.
Do you have an album in your mind that you’re always trying to live up to when you go into the studio?
Yeah, like a cross between Led Zeppelin and Parliament Funkadelic.
And so what is your definition of success?
Success to me means being able to do what it is that you’re trying to do, and not have to do something else to support it. My display would be like, making the bullies that took my lunch money carry me around town on their backs.
Do you think the way the record industry is going at the moment is going to make that more difficult for people to do? Do you think we’ve come to the end of the super band?
It’s very possible that it is the end of certain things, but it’s also got great renaissance potential. There are no rules, really. And the state of the music business is what it is because it’s surrounded by bad business people, who’ve never been good, and that ain’t fair. Now the internet actually has caused a shift in things, in the waste, the massive colossal waste of many and outlandish disrespect that the music industry went through particularly through the time of alternative music, has bankrupted them all.
And when an artist can make a hit from MySpace it’s out there. If two million people watch a music video on YouTube, that’s like a double platinum single right there. And that’s a commodity all of a sudden now. It doesn’t make it harder to make music, it just means that you don’t look at it as a child to a parent – you might have to take care of your own ass and not expect people to feed you all red M+Ms when you come to the backstage area.
So you don’t have someone separating your Skittles out for you?
Nah, nah. I separate them all out myself.
Jesse Hughes, who is going to play you in the movie version of your life?
Lindsay Lohan. Or, William H. Macy. No wait, here it goes: Burt Reynolds, in a time machine from 1970.
Having a time machine would be so great. Who would you go back in time and get it on with if you could do that?
I would go back in time and hit Karl Marx with a hammer, and we would never have had Communism in the first place.
Oh, no. Ok.
I would go back in time, and I would get eight Raquel Welchs, and I would go to the future and kick back. That’s what else I’d do.
I think I’d go back in time and do Kiefer Sutherland in the Lost Boys.
HA! I think I would go with you!
Up there with other things that are hard to believe, is that Chinese Democracy was actually released. What is your professional opinion?
I think North Korean democracy is much better. But I think as a world beat, adult contemporary soft jazz album, it’s sort of mediocre. As a rock album and something from someone that purports to be one of the greatest rockers of all time and has the right to wield such a budget, it’s a savage disappointment.
Perhaps calling it the Axl Rose Project and not Guns N’ Roses might have made it less stultifying terrible.
Well it’s G’N’R with him, not Guns N’ Roses, and that’s what he wants it to be. I don’t think the guy really gives a shit, I think he was just so wanting control that he did everything himself just to spite the band.
Do you think we’ll just never hear from him again now? He’s totally AWOL.
No, I think we’ll definitely hear from him again. It’s impossible not to hear from a guy like that. This is where it comes into being up to us to set the standard: we can sit back and accept an album like that, or we can help the man and tell him that he actually needs to live up to who he is, which is one of the greatest rock and rollers of all time who put out Appetite for Destruction. I mean, come on. What are you doing? People have jobs, you know. When you waste 15-odd million dollar and 17 years a lot of people lose their jobs, and they lose their faith. That doesn’t say, “We love what we do,” it says “We’re entitled to it.” This is the greatest job in the world, and you have an obligation to do the best you can do.
Tell us what we have to look forward to at your show.
What you have to look forward to (and especially if you have a time machine you can do it now) is some of the greatest hip-shaking rock and roll of all time. And the absolute end to the dependence on foreign oil.
[The show it at] Luna Park is kind like Coney Island, only it’s much prettier and it actually works, most of it. So get there early and take a little spin on the Ferris wheel.
Will you take me on the rollercoaster? I love rollercoasters.
I don’t think there is one anymore.
What about the Ferris wheel?
Sure thing.
I’m going to hold you to that.
Eagles Of Death Metal swagger to our shores this week, proudly presented by FasterLouder.
Friday 24 April – The Tivoli, Brisbane
Saturday 25 April – Big Top Luna Park, Sydney (All Ages)
Sunday 26 April – Palace Theatre, Melbourne
Tuesday 28 April – Metropolis Fremantle, Perth
to listen to their music now on 
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