Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan (also of Tool, etc.) and guitarist Mat Mitchell spoke to SiriusXM regarding the recent ordeal that their bassist Matt McJunkins underwent at the Eagles Of Death Metal‘s recent show in Paris, France. McJunkins was performing as a member of the Eagles Of Death Metal during the set when armed terrorists stormed the venue and killed over 80 concertgoers before taking numerous members of the audience hostage. The police ultimately ended that stand-off by force.
McJunkins was among those unable to immediately escape the venue, and Keenan recounts how they found out
“It was an awful, an awful 24 hours, just trying to figure out where he was… I guess Junk [McJunkins] had gotten a hold of somebody’s cell phone in the venue and texted his or called his significant other to say that he was pinned down.
The rest of the band got out, but he did not. And then that’s all we heard. We were simply in the dark for the next 12 hours waiting to hear anything. And we finally saw that like the authorities were in the building now, we still didn’t hear from him. So we had no idea if he was a casualty or not.
Of course we were up all night and so the show the next day was understandably – we were just exhausted, so it was of course hard to hold back the emotions a little bit, so it wasn’t, this was not our favorite show.”
As for McJunkins‘ experience, Keenan relayed that he hasn’t directly talked to McJunkins of the ordeal. Of that he offered:
“We weren’t in it, but just the thoughts of our friend going through it, and we don’t even know what he saw yet. We have no idea if he saw all this, or if he was hiding under a rock—I have no idea, I don’t know that he wants to talk about it.”
McJunkins himself issued a short statement earlier today, thanking everyone for their support and well wishes.
