Josh Homme Kicks Female Photographer In The Face During LA Show

By Scott Munro

December 11, 2017

Josh Homme has apologized after he kicked a female photographer in the head during a Queens Of The Stone Age show in Los Angeles on Saturday night.

Chelsea Lauren was covering the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas show for Shutterstock over the weekend when Homme kicked out at her as he walked across the stage. He connected with Lauren’s camera which in turn hit her in the face.

She later posted a video of the incident on Instagram, which can be seen below.

Lauren told Variety that she was sure it was “very intentional” and added: “Josh was coming over and I was pretty excited, I’ve never actually photographed Queens Of The Stone Age before, I was really looking forward to it.

“I saw him coming over and I was shooting away. 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, I just got down and was holding my face because it hurt so badly.”

Lauren also reports that following the incident, Homme took out what appeared to be a knife and deliberately cut his own forehead.

Thanks to Josh Homme @queensofthestoneage I now get to spend my night in the ER. Seriously, WHO DOES THAT?!? #joshhomme #queensofthestoneage #qotsa #qotsafamily #concertphotography #musicphotographer

A post shared by Chelsea Lauren (@chelsealaurenla) on Dec 9, 2017 at 11:38pm PST

Homme then issued a statement, initially suggesting that it had been an accident.

He said: “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.”

Homme has now issued a second apology in a Twitter video, saying: “I would just like to apologize to Chelsea Lauren – I don’t have any excuse or reason to justify what I did. I was a total d**k and I’m truly sorry, I hope you’re OK. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life and last night was definitely one of them and I apologize for that.

“I want to be a good man, but I think last night I definitely failed at that.”

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— QOTSA (@qotsa) December 10, 2017

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— QOTSA (@qotsa) December 11, 2017

Thank you everyone that has reached out with supportive messages. A small update, as I'm being flooded with questions: My neck is a sore, my eyebrow bruised and I'm a bit nauseous. The doctor released me early in the morning. Here are three images. Two of them as Josh looked at me, smiled and then kicked me. The other one is later after he cut his own face with a knife. I was in the pit in tears - and he just stared at me smiling. Assault in any form is not okay, no matter what the reasoning. Alcohol and drugs are no excuse. I was where I was allowed to be, I was not breaking any rules. I was simply trying to do my job. I hold nobody accountable for this but Josh himself. KROQ has nothing to do with this and I will always support them. The irony is someone had thrown an ice cube on to the very slick catwalk before the QOTSA set. I was afraid that one of the band members might slip and hurt themselves so, when the lights went dark, I used my arm to wipe down the runway so nobody would hurt themselves. Thank you to @variety for their immediate concern and care with this matter. As of now, nobody from QOTSA has reached out to me. #queensofthestoneage #QOTSA #JoshHomme

A post shared by Chelsea Lauren (@chelsealaurenla) on Dec 10, 2017 at 11:22am PST

Read more at TeamRock.com

Photo Credit: Getty